J-Job Alert: Los Angeles

“The Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists, the leading supporter of emerging artists creating new Jewish culture, has a part-time opportunity for an Associate Director based in Los Angeles. We are looking for a self-motivated, resourceful and detail-oriented person to join the Six Points team. Working under the supervision of the fellowship’s New York-based Director, the Associate Director administers the day-to-day operations of the Los Angeles-based program. The Associate Director will work collaboratively with the Six Points Fellowship Director, who will play a significant role in devising and implementing the long-term strategy for the Los Angeles Fellowship Program.” For more information, check the Idealist.org listing.

Monday Morning Markets/Jobs/Opportunities

Let’s try out a different format for these Monday morning posts, shall we? Please let me know what you think. Is this format more user-friendly than what we’ve presented in the past?

  • Witness, a literary journal now based at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has announced revised submission guidelines, including a call for submissions on the theme of “Disaster.” Pays: “$25 for every 1,500 words of prose and $25 per poem, for both print and online work.”
  • The Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award (McSweeney’s) gives a grant “to aid a young woman writer of 32 years or younger” who embodies the personal strengths of Amanda Davis and who needs some time to finish a book in progress. Deadline: December 1, 2010. No application fee.
  • Also from McSweeney’s: The Second Annual Columnist Contest is open to submissions until this Friday, September 10. “Our site is known for printing funny things, but columns need not be comic in nature. They just need to be interesting reading.” No fees. Cash prizes and contracts to the winners.
  • Poetry Competition (no entry fee) from the Genomics Policy and Research Forum, requiring a poem (no more than 50 lines) on the theme of “improving the human.” Cash prizes, publication, and an evening of poetry readings based on the winning entries (hosted by the Scottish Poetry Library). Deadline: October 7, 2010.
  • Assistant Professor of Creative Writing (fiction), Bucknell University
  • Assistant Professor of Creative Writing (poetry), University of Minnesota
  • Some nonteaching jobs for writers: Writer/Client Manager at Macalaster College (Minn.), Writer at Boston College, Director of Communications at Rhodes College (Tenn.).

Jonathan Franzen in NYC on September 8

Some of will surely be otherwise occupied on Wednesday night (brisket, anyone? evening services?). But if you’re going to be in NYC and have been intrigued by all the attention going to Jonathan Franzen and his new novel, you may want to see the author himself at the Union Square Barnes & Noble.

As The Jewish Week has noted:

Jonathan Franzen is not Jewish. But his latest novel, “Freedom,” perhaps the most anticipated novel of the year, is chock full of Jewish characters. Centered on a mixed marriage between a Christian and a Jew, Patty Berglund is the Jewish half. Given Franzen’s penchant for superbly rendered characters, it’s no wonder that Patty seems an echt-upper class, secular American Jew. Or does she? There’s already been a fair amount of online chatter that Patty and, more importantly, about a family friend in the novel who is a prominent Jewish neocon, is more caricature than realistic character. Of the Jewish neocon friend, Franzen writes: “He spoke of the ‘new blood libel’ that was circulating in the Arab world, the lie about there having been no Jews in the twin towers on 9/11, and of the need, in times of national emergency, to counter evil lies with benevolent half-truths.”

Notes from Around the Web

It’s good to be back presenting Friday Lit Links for you! I have to confess that a shocking number of links this week will take you elsewhere within erikadreifus.com, but thankfully, I have managed to find several items worth your time elsewhere, too!

Let’s get going:

  • A conference presentation podcast I hope to listen to myself this weekend, on “what’s hot in Israeli fiction.”
  • This profile will help American readers get to known British author Howard Jacobson
  • A review of Jon Papernick’s new short story collection, There Is No Other (a book that I’m hoping to read soon).
  • A teaching job for an English-language fiction writer in the creative writing program at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
  • An interview with author Allison Amend
  • And, given the rapid approach of the High Holy Days, an essay from my own archive: “Reflections During the Days of Awe.”

Shabbat shalom!

Friday Find: Where to Publish Your Work

Maybe some of you are planning to spend time this weekend mapping out submission strategies. After all, most of us here in the U.S. have a three-day weekend and a bit of extra time.

Here’s a resource that may help you, right here on erikadreifus.com: a page on “Where to Publish Your Work.” I hope that you find it helpful! And if you do, please share it with your friends/fellow writers.

Have a great weekend, everyone. This blog won’t take Monday off–we’ll see you back here then.