Quotation of the Week: Joshua Henkin

by Erika Dreifus on
4

“Every writer is faced with the same question: do you write about what you know or what you don’t know? Some of my writing students, particularly my undergraduates, err to one extreme or the other. They write simply what they know, which is a transcript of Friday night’s keg party, or simply what they don’t know, which is Martians. What they need to do—and here I’m quoting a former writing teacher of mine—is write what they know about what they don’t know or what they don’t know about what they know.”

Source: Joshua Henkin, “Risk,” Glimmer Train Bulletin #35

MJHNYC Event: "How to Write Our Parents’ Wars"

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

So, now that I know my way to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, I’m even more interested in the programs offered there this winter.

Here’s one January event that looks especially interesting:

PANEL DISCUSSION

Sunday, January 24, 1:30 p.m.

How to Write Our Parents’ Wars

Panel discussion and memoir writing workshop with Judith Greenberg (Cypora’s Echo), Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer (Ghosts of Home), Irene Kacandes (Daddy’s War: Greek American Stories), Nancy Kricorian (Zabelle), and Gabriele Schwab (Haunting Legacies); moderated by Nancy K. Miller (Bequest and Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent’s Death)

Writers and critics in history and literary studies will discuss the challenges we face in bringing the complicated narratives of the past into the present. Following the discussion, audience members can participate in a memoir writing workshop in small groups led by individual panelists. Pre-registration for the workshop is required.

$10, $7 students/seniors, $5 members

For more information, click here.

Visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

I’m embarrassed to admit that my visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Sunday was my very first to that incredible institution.

In addition to the permanent core exhibition, I wanted to see two temporary offerings: “Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges” and “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.” Each would have been well worth the trip (and admission) on its own.

I encourage everyone to go to the Museum and see these exhibitions themselves, but even a Web visit will provide much to think about.

P.S. It appears that a film quite related to “Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow” will be screened in DC as part of the Washington Jewish Film Festival on Tuesday, December 8.

Quotation of the Week: Richard Marius

by Erika Dreifus on
6

Here’s a favorite from one of my own teachers, Richard Marius:

“All writers create. I am always annoyed to hear fiction and poetry called ‘creative’ writing as if writing that explains, describes, and narrates – nonfiction – should somehow be relegated to the basement of the writing enterprise to dwell with the pails and the pipes. To assume that only fiction and poetry are ‘creative’ is to imagine that fiction writers and poets are somehow superior to scholars, journalists, and others who report, explain, and describe. A good case may be made for the proposition that the most truly original and creative writers in our society today work in nonfiction – Tom Wolfe, Gloria Emerson, Roger Rosenblatt, Carl Schorske, Joan Didion, Joe McGinniss, John McPhee, Garry Wills, Robert Caro, David McCullough, Roger Angell, Barbara Tuchman, and a host of others.”

Source: Marius, A Writer’s Companion, first edition (New York: Knopf, 1985), 15.