Erika Dreifus

Most Fridays the Practicing Writing blog shares writing and publishing resources, news, and reflections to peruse over the weekend. But it’s been an excruciating week for so many of us. And frankly, I’ve paid next-to-no attention to garden-variety news from the writing and publishing spheres.

On Wednesday, however, I received an email from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based global nonprofit organization that I’ve admired for many years. The email introduced a “mini-lesson” titled “Processing Attacks in Israel and the Outbreak of War in the Region.”

The resource isn’t perfect. (What resource is?) But one of its segments impressed me as something that, though intended for educators and students, could be clarifying for writers as well, in our work and in the rest of our lives. It’s a section titled “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

• Lee Gutkind’s opening piece in the new (75th!) issue of Creative Nonfiction offers a terrific mini-history of contemporary cnf.
• Happening next week (May 17-21): the Drexel Writing Festival. Check out the schedule; “all events are free and open to the public and will take place on Zoom.”
• Saddened to learn about the passing of Joel Friedlander. And I’ll always be grateful to him.
• Amazing story by Marina Magloire about poet Lucille Clifton, who lost her house to foreclosure decades ago. Now, her children have bought it back; they hope to make the house “a space for emerging and established artists and writers.”
• And there’s a fresh set of Jewish lit links posted over on the My Machberet blog.

Have a good weekend, everyone.