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.”

• “I Never Made a Living Wage When I Worked in Publishing”: a sobering essay by Bethany Ball for Electric Literature.
• Looking ahead: Robert Lee Brewer is already planning the April Poem-A-Day (PAD) Challenge on the Writer’s Digest site. An excellent source for prompts and motivation during National Poetry Month.
• Attention, fans of author Rebecca Makkai (and really, who isn’t a fan of Rebecca Makkai?). I have three 1-month gift subscriptions to give to would-be readers of her Subsack newsletter. They’ll go to the first three people who comment on this post with a request. (Yes, many of her posts are freely available; the subscriptions will give you temporary access to those that are “locked.”)
• More about AI writing, and other topics, in this Lit Mag News roundup.
• “For the people at Jewish Book Week and the Genesis Foundation, apparently writers can emerge (re-emerge, be unsubmerged, surge) at any age.” From a wonderful essay by Karen E.H. Skinazi that you’ll find cross-posted over on My Machberet, in the latest Jewish Literary Links.

Have a good weekend, everyone.