Thursday’s Pre-Publication Post: Vistaprint to the Rescue!

by Erika Dreifus on
2

New book. New website. New primary email address. Also, as it happens, new cell phone coordinates (finally parted with my original Massachusetts number). What was missing?

New business cards! And, while I was at it, new postcards for my blogs and the book.

Vistaprint to the rescue.

I spent quite a chunk of time last weekend on the Vistaprint site, selecting and editing designs for a new business card and postcards to promote both of my blogs: Practicing Writing and My Machberet (pictured). I’m still tweaking the postcard for Quiet Americans, but since I had already crossed the threshhold for free shipping, I went ahead and ordered the rest of the materials on Sunday. This way, they’ll arrive today (so the FedEx tracking system promises), and I can start putting them to use as soon as Sunday, when I’ll be attending the Jewish Authors’ Conference here in NYC.

I heart Vistaprint (even though they inundate me with emails and offers).

The Wednesday Web Browser

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Welcome to our Wednesday writerly link roundup. May I present:

Quotation of the Week: Beth Garland

by Erika Dreifus on
3

This week I’m proud to present not only a quotation, but rather an entire brief essay by my friend Beth Garland, who has recently returned from a trip to the War, Literature, and the Arts Conference in Colorado Springs. The theme of the 2010 conference was “the representation and reporting of America’s wars from 1990 to present.” Beth was invited to appear and read from one of her most impressive works of short fiction to date (and I’ve read many of them), “Departure,” a piece that focuses on one Army wife’s journey home after sending her husband off on a deployment to Iraq.

Here’s a little bit about our guest blogger: Beth Garland, a former technical writer, earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. She has been “married to the military” for 10 years and has written articles on military marriage for examiner.com. She lives in Surf City, N.C., with her husband and two daughters and is expecting a third child next spring.

In the week leading up to the War, Literature, and the Arts Conference in Colorado Springs, my emotions ran from one end of the spectrum to the other. Fear, pride, excitement, dread…wanting to go ahead with the trip as planned one day, ready to back out the next. I’d like to blame it all on the fact that I’m newly pregnant again and my hormones are going crazy, but in truth, I was just being me, a terribly anxious person who always expects the worst. I’m afraid to fly, so I could hardly believe that I needed to worry about how well the 15-minute reading of my story “Departure,” would go, since I wouldn’t survive the trip there, but if by some miracle I did, I would have to face my second biggest fear, public speaking. And then, if I were still breathing after all that, I’d have to get back on a plane and fly home. I began to refer to the ordeal as the Trifecta of Terror (more…)

Monday Morning Markets/Jobs/Opportunities

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
  • Resource alert! The next (October) issue of The Practicing Writer, a free e-newsletter for poets, fictionists, and writers of creative nonfiction, will go out to subscribers on Thursday. As usual, it will be filled with submission calls (paying opportunities only!), no-fee contest and competition announcements, and much more. Not yet a subscriber? Join us!
  • I’m a fan of residency programs, but rarely do I stumble on an announcement that simply makes me long to be awarded a residency in a particular program. But that’s exactly what happened when I discovered the Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France.
  • The Writer magazine’s blog lets us in on a really neat-sounding part-time freelance writing/blogging gig at Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel.
  • Jane Friedman shares 7 no-cost writing competitions that can yield excellent professional results.
  • Teaching jobs I learned about this past week: The University of Maine at Farmington seeks an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing “with significant credits in writing for film or television. Additional qualifications and publications in journalism and/or fiction would be welcome.” Bridgewater State University (Mass.) is also looking to hire an Assistant Professor (with a fiction specialty). The University of Southern Mississippi will be hiring an Associate/Full Professor to serve as a Distinguished Senior Fiction Writer. And the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is looking for “an advanced associate professor or a full professor to serve as the Glenna Luschei Professor and Editor of Prairie Schooner” (the applicant should have “a distinguished publication record as a poet, significant experience as an editor of creative works, a record of excellent teaching, and an active creative/research program.”
  • And some non-teaching jobs: DePaul University (Ill.) is looking for a Senior Writer, Penland School of Crafts (N.C.) seeks a Communications and Marketing Associate, and Heyday Books (Calif.) is advertising for a Marketing/Publicity Director.