Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat
Shabbat shalom.
Wednesday’s WIP: Anniversaries
Seven years ago today, I returned to full-time (M-F, 9-5) employment, in a writing-intensive staff job at The City University of New York.
Happy anniversary to me!
This seems to be an appropriate moment to revisit a post from two years ago (day-job anniversary #5), in which I shared a list of day-job benefits that included–but went beyond–the stable paycheck, health insurance, and retirement account. So many of you commented so wonderfully on that post, so why not give it another look?
In other news, the February issue of The Practicing Writer went out at the end of last week, marking the conclusion of 10 full years of the newsletter’s publication and the beginning of Year 11. Happy anniversary to all of us on that one! And thank you all for being part of my writing practice!
P.S. Not an anniversary, but another highlight of this last week: my second book review for The Washington Post. See what I had to say about Elisabeth de Waal’s The Exiles Return.
Words of the Week: Marc Tracy
“In practice, based both on the preferences of BDS supporters (including [Omar] arghouti, a co-founder) and the movement’s tenets, BDS’s success is most likely to involve the end of the Zionist project. And what this means is that any BDS supporter effectively advocates a one-state solution, even if, should you put the question to him, he would tell you he would prefer two states.”
Source: Marc Tracy, “With All the Boycott Israel Talk, What Is BDS?” in The New Republic
Monday Markets for Writers
Monday brings the weekly batch of no-fee competitions/contests, paying submission calls, and jobs for those of us who write (especially those of us who write fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction).
From My Bookshelf: The Exiles Return, by Elisabeth de Waal
“If Elisabeth de Waal’s name sounds familiar, credit her grandson, Edmund de Waal. His acclaimed book ‘The Hare with Amber Eyes‘ (2010) chronicled the history of Elisabeth’s family, the Ephrussis, an eminent Jewish clan in Europe. As readers of the younger de Waal’s book may recall, Elisabeth (1899-1991) lived an accomplished life, but one achievement eluded her: Although she wrote five novels — two in German and three in English — not one found a publisher. Until recently.
The manuscript now published as ‘The Exiles Return‘ is set mainly in 1954-55, in the months leading up to the signing of the State Treaty, which, the novel’s brief and enigmatic prelude reminds us, ‘led to the withdrawal of the Allied Occupation forces and finally restored Austria’s independence.’ This setting may prompt some readers to view ‘The Exiles Return’ as a historical novel, but for Elisabeth, it was a fairly contemporary creation.”
Please read the rest of my review in The Washington Post.