Job Alert: AJWS Seeks Part-Time Writer

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

From the American Jewish World Service:

The communications department is seeking a part-time writer (20 hours per week) who will be responsible for drafting op-eds, blog posts and letters to the editor on behalf of Ruth Messinger and other AJWS leaders. These pieces must effectively and persuasively communicate the organization’s mission and advocacy positions while leveraging various “news hooks” such as world events, public policy debates, Jewish holidays, AJWS programs and events, and secular days of recognition/commemoration.

Full announcement on Idealist.org.

Friday Find: Robert Caro on the Sense of Place

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

If you have some time to watch and/or listen this weekend, I recommend that you treat yourself to a video of Robert Caro speaking on “sense of place”: “Great books give their readers a sense of place to be able to see clearly, as though they were there,” Caro said, “and that sense of place is just as important for nonfiction as it is for fiction.”

Caro delivered the speech upon accepting the Biographers International Organization (BIO) Award at the Compleat Biographer Conference in Washington this past spring.

Enjoy, and see you back here on Monday

Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
  • This past week came the very excellent news that poet and professor Rick Chess has joined the blogging team over at “Good Letters,” the blog of Image Journal. Go read his first post, “Torah in My Mouth,” and look forward, as I am, to his future contributions.
  • Kenneth Sherman’s appreciation of Yuri Suhl’s One Foot in America (originally published in 1950), reminded me that Sherman’s own What the Furies Bring remains on my nightstand, still waiting to be read.
  • The New York Times reveals what’s interesting to Israeli author Etgar Keret.
  • I’ve been a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm for many seasons, in part because my dad and his parents and grandmother were neighbors of Larry David’s family in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, way back when. Also, my dad is occasionally mistaken for Larry David himself! The show always makes me laugh, and this season, which began Sunday night, is no exception. Check out this column from The Forward, focusing on the show’s particularly Jewish qualities. (Bonus: some down-home NYC footage.)
  • On a much more serious note: Adam Kirsch has yet again added a book to my tbr list: “There is a double meaning in the subtitle of René Blum and the Ballets Russes: In Search of a Lost Life (Oxford, $29.95), the new biography by Judith Chazin-Bennahum. The life of René Blum was lost in the Holocaust: Like tens of thousands of French Jews, he was deported from Drancy, the internment camp in Paris, to Auschwitz, where he died in 1942. But it was the way he lived, not the way he died, that makes him such an elusive presence even in his own biography.”
  • Don’t forget that the next Jewish Book Council Twitter Book Club is scheduled for next Wednesday, July 20. Featured title: Deborah Lipstadt’s The Eichmann Trial. Lipstadt will participate in the chat.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Thursday’s Post-Publication Post: One Writer’s Summer To-Do List, Three Weeks In

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    Today marks three weeks since I posted my summer to-do list. What sort of progress have I made? I’ll share that below, in an updated reprint of the post.

    North of the equator, we’ve just begun summer. Although I’m still going to be working 40 hours a week in my day job, still running the usual errands, still partaking in the same family responsibilities (and joys), I’m also hoping to accomplish certain writing-related goals before we merge into fall.

    After all, for six weeks this summer, my 40 hours at the office will be recalibrated: heavier on Mondays-Thursdays with “summer Fridays” off. I hope to use those Fridays wisely. And I hope that I can use the general light and energy of the summer to help infuse some projects under way and others that I hope to start.

    Herewith, items on my list of writerly hopes, plans, ambitions, and commitments for the season.

    (more…)

    The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2
  • One reason that I love Midge Raymond’s latest writing prompt is that the story I’m drafting right now actually began with the working title, “Mistake.” (It may return to that title, too, but for now it’s got another name.)
  • Coming soon in The Writer: my review of Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, by Christopher Johnson. Curious about this book? You can win one of 20 free copies via Goodreads! Enter by July 16 (U.S. addresses only).
  • The Story Prize blog is featuring a series of posts (mini-essays and Q&As) with the authors of collections that have been submitted for the 2011 prize. These posts make for great and thoughtful reading. See, for instance, Charles Baxter’s response to the question “What do you think a good short story collection should deliver?”.
  • I’ll be mentioning this again on my other blog, but I’m delighted to learn that poet and professor Rick Chess has joined the team over on Good Letters, the blog of the literary journal Image, which prides itself on presenting “the best writing and artwork that is informed by—or grapples with—religious faith.”
  • Basic guidelines for social media etiquette, courtesy of Robert Lee Brewer.