Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- February 9, 2018 Edition

> Do you hedge and cower in your writing, using a lot of qualifier words and unnecessary amplifiers? Jessi Rita Hoffman has some notes for you, via Jane Friedman's site.

> On Tiferet Talks (podcast for Tiferet Journal), Gayle Brandeis, author of the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis, chats with one of my former mentors, Leslea Newman, author of the poetry book, I Carry My Mother, and many other significant works, including A Letter to Harvey Milk and October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard.

> Many writers who have put up posts and articles on Huffington Post since its inception have hoped the site would wake up and end its non-paying policy; instead, HuffPo will simply stop publishing any outside contributors.

> Anyone else love dissecting short works by looking at their opening and/or closing lines in isolation? In this post, the editors at Brevity are luring readers in with the first lines of essays published in their newest issue.

> The NBCC (National Book Critics Circle) has announced its 2017 Award Finalists in advance of the March 17 presentations.

>In the category of Print-This-Out-and-Give-It-To-a-Non-Writer-Friend, Leslie Pietrzyk notes all the ways to help a writer.

> Finally, this one's just for my New Jersey/NYC/Eastern Pennsylvania writer friends: looking for a relaxing place and atmosphere to disappear for a day and write? Check out next Saturday's Cedar Ridge Writers Series mid-winter retreat.

Have a great weekend!

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- June 2, 2017 Edition

> In case you missed it, do read Susan Shapiro's smart, incisive rebuttal, "Taking It Personally: A Feminist Defense Of The First-Person Essay", at Forward, written in response to Jia Tolentino's piece on the New Yorker's website that declared "The Personal Essay Boom is Over."

> I'm not, like so many of my writing friends and colleagues, in Iceland for the biannual NonFiction Now! Conference, so am periodically checking out the Twitter stream #nfnow17. 

> And I also wasn't at Book Expo in New York City this week, so followed some of the action via #BookExpo and #BEA17. Publisher's Weekly has extensive coverage, too. (Oh, and a NYC tabloid says anti-Trump books were in evidence. True fact!)

> Leslie Pietrzyk has some advice for recent MFA grads, re: keeping in touch with your professors. 

> This past week, I was sad to learn of the passing of Brain Doyle, a remarkable essayist whose work I've long admired. Here is Brevity's round-up/tribute of some of his most memorable passages in their pages. If you've never read his work, go find it! (Start with "Being Brians" because it's fun and unusual.)

> Likewise, we lost Frank Deford, one of the best narrative sports writers, an NPR Morning Edition commentator, and author of a memoir about his daughter's shortened life (from cystic fibrosis)--Alex: The Life of a Child, 1983--at a time when that kind of book was an anomaly. He was one of my early writing idols (I started out writing about sports--ice hockey and equestrian.)

> Recently, as I edited a memoir manuscript for a publisher client that was mostly about the mid- to late-1960s in Haight-Ashbury (as in, it contained plenty of S, D & RnR!), I did a bunch of fact-checking. You can just imagine what my Google and Facebook ad stream looked like after that. I should have been using Incognito mode!

> Finally, do you too have a super duper, always admirable writing process like Hallie Cantor?

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons--FaceMePls