Friday Finds for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
2

Treasure ChestWriting-related resources, news, and reflections to read over the weekend.

  • “Should an M.F.A. trying to make it in her field accept an adjunct teaching job or take a break from academe?” That’s the question a writer asked The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s “Ms. Mentor.” See what the sage counselor advised.
  • Also on the economic front: “Ways to Fund Your Narrative Nonfiction Project.” (I have to admit that sleeping in a rental car doesn’t appeal to me at all, but others may be okay with it.)
  • As Short Story Month draws to a close, Elliott Holt offers a beautiful post on Chekhov’s canonical “The Lady with the Little Dog” (which happens to be one of my favorite stories, too).
  • Wise thoughts from Roxane Gay on promotion and publicity. One of my favorite snippets: “Share links to your new book, interview, essay, story, poem, whatever, once or twice, maybe even three times. Beyond that, you’re probably sharing too much, especially if we’re talking about a compressed time span.” (Also: Roxane was offering free books when she published her post on Tuesday. Maybe some of them are still left.)
  • On a related note: useful checklist of basic book-promotion materials.

    • Have a great weekend, everyone. See you back here on Monday!

    Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress: A Visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage

    by Erika Dreifus on
    3

    ato_down_01This evening will be special: I will be meeting with the Young Friends group at the Museum of Jewish Heritage downtown to talk about my story collection, Quiet Americans. The icing on the cake is that after our discussion, we’ll be able to tour the museum’s new exhibit, “Against the Odds: American Jews and the Rescue of Europe’s Refugees, 1933-1941.”

    The exhibit opened last week, and it has already received some excellent press coverage. (See, for example, The Wall Street Journal and this Associated Press item in The Huffington Post.)

    Most of you who visit this blog regularly know that my paternal grandparents, whose experiences inspired much of Quiet Americans, were German Jews who found refuge in the United States in the late 1930s. So I’m sure you can understand why I’m especially moved to have the opportunity to share the book and see the exhibit on the same evening. And why I think that it’s something very special.

    Friday Finds for Writers

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Treasure ChestWriting-related resources, news, and reflections to read over the weekend.

  • “Some people move to New York to realize their literary dreams, but I had to leave.” Geeta Kothari explains why this was so in a beautiful essay for the VQR blog.
  • Judy Blume fans, New York magazine has some treats for you!
  • Among the highlights of my visit to the BIO conference last weekend was a panel on the politics and ethics of book reviewing. Quite a big topic, with so many threads to pursue. One that the panel didn’t have time to address–publishers’ strategic misuse of reviews for blurbing purposes–is at the heart of Ron Charles’s recent commentary. On a related note: Bethanne Patrick’s reflections on “why literary criticism still matters” are also worth a read.
  • Reflections on rejection, whether we’re talking about a McSweeney‘s submission or a tenure-track teaching job, from John Warner.
  • Also on the subject of submissions: Jennifer Niesslein offers “6 Rules of Thumb from an Editor-Turned-Writer” over on Jane Friedman’s blog. (I’ll confess some doubts about rule #2, but I’d have to do some major archival unearthing and analysis to see how many times my own experience may have disproved it.)
  • Just a reminder that you still have time to enter the Short Story Month Quiet Americans giveaway!

    • Have a great weekend, everyone. Yes, Monday’s a holiday here in the U.S., but the blog will be back then nonetheless!

    Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress: A Brief Look at BIO

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    schedLast weekend, I had the happy opportunity to spend a few hours at the fourth annual “Compleat Biographer Conference” organized by the smart and intrepid folks behind Biographers International Organization (BIO), “the only organization of its kind, completely devoted to all aspects of the art and craft of biography.” The conference migrates. This year, it took place here in New York City; when I was offered the chance to visit, I snapped up the opportunity.

    As a child, I was blessed with an early love for reading that was sustained, in part, by feeding a hearty appetite for biographies. I gobbled up the standard early-elementary introductions to Abraham Lincoln and other stalwarts, but I also read (and reread) a collection of profiles of other (albeit less) famous Americans published by Highlights. I was also an avid consumer of the Scholastic Book Club titles, and I remember in particular one book, They Led the Way: 14 American Women, which I encountered just a few years after its 1973 publication.

    So maybe it’s not all that surprising that some of my earliest freelancing assignments were biographical profiles for encyclopedias. Or that my first idea for a history dissertation topic was a biography, of a French author and activist named Suzanne Prou (here’s the New York Times obituary that inspired my interest). My dissertation ended up taking a different direction, but I’m still drawn to biographies as a reader. (Most recently, I’ve read Jonathan Kirsch’s new biography of “boy avenger” Herschel Grynszpan, and I’ve just published a Q&A with the author on my other blog.) I continue to look for and file away possible subject ideas for my own writing purposes.

    All of which is to explain why I’ve followed the development of BIO (I wrote a brief profile of the organization for The Writer magazine some years ago), and why I was so pleased to visit the conference. If I ever do plunge more bravely into the waters of biography-writing, I’ll definitely depend on BIO for guidance.