Erika Dreifus

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.”

• Did you like my most recent #SundaySentence? I’m a paying subscriber to Summer Brennan’s A Writer’s Notebook Substack publication, which sourced it, and I have one one-month gift subscription left to bestow on the first person who requests it (in the comments below).
• Lots to appreciate in the latest episode of Stay Tuned with Preet, in which host Preet Bharara chats with Frank Bruni. Some of the conversation focuses on writing and, in fact, articulates a lot of what motivates me to select a #SundaySentence (how about that?). Transcript available.
• From Australia’s The Suburban Review: “The writing industry can be daunting at any age and any stage of your career! We know, we’ve been there 😵 (and we still feel it sometimes, too). That’s why we’re working with writer, editor, and critic Jinghua Qian to help out the emerging and early-career writers in our network. The Suburban Review is sponsoring a 60-minute online group mentoring session to be held 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m. AEDT, Sunday 12 February with Jinghua Qian as part of The Drop-In: solicited advice on the business, craft, and agony of writing. These mentoring sessions are a low-key, hour-long video chat where you can turn up and ask anything you like about writing and editing. There are 10 spots, each covered completely by TSR, with priority going to First Nations, POC, trans, and disabled writers.” 
• It’s been another busy week in the Jewish-lit world. Check out the latest links on My Machberet.
• And if it’s the last weekend of the month (it is!) you can count on a new issue of The Practicing Writer 2.0 to be coming your way pretty soon. In the meantime, there are still opportunities listed in the January issue that remain open for submissions.

Have a good weekend, everyone.