Finds for Writers
Most Fridays the Practicing Writing blog shares writing and publishing resources, news, and reflections to peruse over the weekend. But it’s been an excruciating week for so many of us. And frankly, I’ve paid next-to-no attention to garden-variety news from the writing and publishing spheres.
On Wednesday, however, I received an email from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based global nonprofit organization that I’ve admired for many years. The email introduced a “mini-lesson” titled “Processing Attacks in Israel and the Outbreak of War in the Region.”
The resource isn’t perfect. (What resource is?) But one of its segments impressed me as something that, though intended for educators and students, could be clarifying for writers as well, in our work and in the rest of our lives. It’s a section titled “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
- I know that a lot of people have left Twitter. But it’s still good for some things. For instance, it’s where I discovered Isabel Kaplan’s excellent essay that begins, “Five weeks to the day after my debut novel was published, my boyfriend, who is a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer.”
- Twitter is also where, as CNN reported, “when debut author Chelsea Banning shared her disappointment over a sparsely attended book signing, bestselling authors including Stephen King, Jodi Picoult and Margaret Atwood came forward to console her with their own tales of woe.”
- Robert Lee Brewer’s latest (November) poem-a-day challenge may have ended, but he has helpfully gathered all “30 prompts in 30 days (technically 35 prompts, because of the Two-for-Tuesday prompts)” in this Writer’s Digest post.
- Reviewers have many ways to discover yet-to-be-published titles for possible review; one such resource, Publishers Weekly‘s semiannual “announcements” issues, has just published its latest edition. (For the full calendar, including information about upcoming children’s books and other announcements beyond what was listed this week, check this page.)
- And of course, there’s a new set of Jewish literary links up for your perusal over on the My Machberet blog.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
