Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Every Friday My Machberet presents an array of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • “It is my deepest wish that I have honoured those who were lost – including my grandfather – with this novel.” Suzanne Reisman explains what having her novel manuscript longlisted for the Bath Novel Award means to her.
  • This week brought the June Jewish Book Carnival, hosted by Life Is Like a Library.
  • Israeli author Etgar Keret is making the rounds promoting his new book, a memoir. Listen to his interview with Terry Gross.
  • Over on the Fig Tree Books blog, I introduce a new review of work by author Gerald Green (1922-2006).
  • And also Fig Tree-related: Enter this Goodreads giveaway for the next FTB title, Ben Nadler’s The Sea Beach Line.

    • Shabbat Shalom.

    Sunday Sentence

    by Erika Dreifus on
    1
    Alan Cheuse
    Alan Cheuse

    In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

    You may have read about an imaginary Southern piece of turf where the past presses on the present with such force that characters find themselves transformed with the pressure of it, where the landscape comes alive, where human beings seem sometimes like gods and sometimes like devils, and the language of the story lights up your mind: William Faulkner’s half-historical, half-fabulized Yoknapatawpha County, yes?

    Source: Alan Cheuse, review of Steve Stern’s The Pinch, for NPR.

    Friday Finds for Writers

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Treasure Chest
    Writing-related resources, news, and reflections to enjoy over the weekend.

  • Useful Brevity blog post on writing residencies by Allison K. Williams. Nice mix of personal account and resource information.
  • Revision tips on the Story Prize blog, from novelist and short-story writer Karen E. Bender.
  • On my weekend viewing agenda: “Book TV’s tour of the New York Times Book Review included an interview with the section’s editor, Pamela Paul, and a look at the department’s weekly ‘headlines’ meeting, where the upcoming edition of the Book Review is discussed.”
  • Speaking of the NYTBR: Last week’s “Bookends” page, with contributions from Mohsin Hamid and James Parker, addressed a topic in which I am invested both as a reader and as a writer: whether “more is necessarily more” when it comes to page count.
  • And some literary humor on BuzzFeed, from Shannon Reed, who imagines “If Jane Austen Got Feedback From Some Guy In A Writing Workshop.” (popular online, but I first saw it thanks to Nick Kocz)