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.”
- Black History Month may have ended, but a new page “Highlighting the History of Black Writers at the Library of Congress” merits year-round attention.
- ICYMI: The March issue of The Practicing Writer 2.0 went out to subscribers this week. As usual, it features dozens of fee-free and paying opportunities. It also features a record-setting numbers of subscriber success stories.
- The aforementioned success stories, and even more recent correspondence with newsletter readers this week, have been part of what’s been fueling my own recent ruminations about writerly success (not a new preoccupation of mine, by any means). Suffice to say that publication is by no means the only sign of “success.” Thus, I’ve found Carroll Sandel’s “Writing for No Readers,” on the Brevity blog, especially resonant.
- My first encounter with the wonderful writing of Abigail Thomas came in the form of MFA-assigned reading; this week brought a writing-focused excerpt, via Oldster, from Thomas’s new memoir, Still Life at Eighty: the Next Interesting Thing. Per Oldster, this memoir is “the very first book out from Golden Notebook Press, an exciting new venture from The Golden Notebook, a fantastic bookstore in Woodstock, New York, the town Thomas now calls home.”
- And don’t miss the latest Jewish literary links on My Machberet: a new profile of Walter Mosley, a call for award submissions, and much more.
Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend.
Thanks for sending me over to Abigail Thomas, Erika. When her Three Dog Life came out, I read it at least twice and was stunned by her honesty and how she dealt with such a huge trauma and loss. It was interesting to read more about her life and continued writing now.
She’s wonderful.