Elul 2009 Newsletter

        from www.WriteInIsrael.com

                 creating community for English writers in Israel

 

1. Events and other information
2. Your publications and prizes
3. The Writing Life

 1. Events and other information 

•  On Sept. 7^th at 7 PM storyteller Donna Jacobs Sife from Australia will present an evening of stories from world folklore, drama and writing exercises at the Stern House in Jerusalem, 34 Tura Street, Yemin Moshe. Sife will show how to let metaphor speak for itself. See www.donnajacobsife.com This program is sponsored by The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University. Limited seating. Reservations a must at: judylabensohn@gmail.com  NIS 30 entrance fee.
• Evan Fallenberg is hosting “Crossing Genres,” a writing retreat at Ma’aleh Hachamisha Hotel on Oct.28-30, 2009 for all writers at all levels. This retreat will enable you to learn about and try your hand at various genres. Teaching creative nonfiction will be Sherri Mandell; playwriting, Madelyn Kent; poetry, Jennie Feldman; and fiction Evan Fallenberg. For full details and bios of instructors, go to www.evanfallenberg.com  and click “writing retreats.” Register now!
• Here’s a partial list of creative writing teachers in Israel:  Shifrah Devorah Witt (Jerusalem), Tel. 0548018483; Dianne Greenberg (Jerusalem), Tel. 02-6719546; Reva Mann (Jerusalem), fiction, memoir,  http://writehelpnow.com; Gila Green (Beit Shemesh), fiction, http://gilatal.blogspot.com ; Dara Barnat (Tel Aviv area), poetry, darabarnat@yahoo.com; Amanada Cohen (Tel Aviv), children’s literature, mandacohen@gmail.com ; Jennie Feldman (Jerusalem), poetry, Tel. 02-6715399; Janice Weizman (Rehovot), fiction, Janice@enco.co.il;  Lisa Katz (Jerusalem), poetry, lisakis@gmail.com ; Ellen Greenfield (Beit Shemesh), memoir, lifenotes@bezeqint.net; Evan Fallenberg (Sharon area), all genres, www.evanfallenberg@gmail.com click “The Studio”;  Judy Labensohn (Jerusalem area), fiction and creative nonfiction, Tel. 02-5709744.  

When choosing a teacher/mentor/writing coach, check for good chemistry, teaching experience and publishing credentials.  Don’t be afraid to meet with a few teachers until you choose one. Do not rely only on family and friends for helping you grow as a writer. Find yourself a qualified instructor or certified writing program that will push you to become the best writer you can.

• For a good listing of literary magazines, go to Poets & Writers Magazine online at http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines?apage=*
• Bar-Ilan is inaugurating the Creative Writing Semester in Israel in February 2010. This 5-month program is for college students (20 or older) to spend the spring semester at Bar-Ilan concentrating on creative writing. Please pass the word to friends and family abroad. Web site should be operable within days at www.cwsiprogram.org  Madelyn Kent, a playwright and new immigrant from New York, is the founder and coordinator of this exciting project. 

2. Your publications and prizes                        

• Yakov Azriel, who did the poetry track at Bar-Ilan, was awarded a fellowship from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (NewYork) for 2009-10. His third book of poems, Beads for the Messiah’s Bride: Poems on Leviticus, recently published by Time Being Books,  has been nominated for the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in poetry.
• Glimmer Train has awarded Ruth Abraham, currently in the fiction track at Bar-Ilan, an Honorable Mention for a short story. Abraham’s story was in the top 5% of over 1,000 entries.
• Yonatan Sredni, a graduate of the fiction track from Bar-Ilan, has been publishing columns in The Jerusalem Post online and in print editions. Google him to read his articles.
• Mike Benn has been published several times during the summer in Upfront, the weekend edition of The Jerusalem Post. His articles also appear online.
• Tania Hershman’s short story collection The White Road and Other Stories was commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Prize for New Writers (England). She is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2009 Binnacle International Ultra-Short Competition. Her first published poem is included in the summer issue of Contrary Magazine (http://www.contrarymagazine.com/Contrary/Baby.html)  The bad news (for us) is that Tania is moving to Bristol “for a few years” at the end of August. We wish her well and look forward to following her continued success.
• A couple of Eva Eliav’s flash stories have been accepted for publication in The St. Ann’s Review and Horizon (online lit. journal).
• Cradled in God’s Arms, a book of poetry and photography by Ruth Fogelman is now available. Visit http://www.geocities.com/jerusalemlives. Ruth graduated from the poetry track at Bar-Ilan.
• Batsheva Pomerantz has self-published a collection of her writings entitled To Walk Four Cubits: Forty Pieces in Honor of Forty Years in Israel. For purchasing, contact Batsheva at bdpom@netvision.net.il
• Jeffrey Green’s story “Overlaps” appeared in the online Vox Humana Literary Journal. See http://voxhumana-lit.com/?p=162
• I am especially excited to announce that Dina Wyshogrod Zlotogorski’s book about her relationship with her late and beloved mother has been accepted for publication by SUNY Press. I am proud to have been one of the midwives for this wonderful book.

 

Congratulations to all these writers on their publishing successes. If you have published a poem, story or book, or won a literary prize, please let me know by emailing me the exact details and I will spread the word. Know that your success inspires others in Israel to send their writing into the world. 

 

3.  The Writing Life

 

One of the best reasons to attend a writing retreat or seminar is that listening to experienced writers can inspire you to go back to your own work and see it with fresh eyes. A writing retreat can jump start a new piece of writing or encourage you to experiment with a new genre.

 

As organizer of the writing seminars held this summer at the Stern House, under the auspices of The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, I was fortunate to be able to listen to and learn from two fabulous teacher/writers—Ilana Blumberg and Ehud Havazelet. When I recovered from the physical strain of eight days of total concentration, I was eager to tackle (again) my own short story collection, which I hadn’t been able to look at for six months. (Flannery O’Connor’s term for such a work is opus nauseous.)

 

On looking with fresh eyes, I saw new flaws. Rather than feel discouraged, I felt elated, because now I knew how to fix them, armed as I was, as were all the participants in these  seminars, with a quiver full of craft techniques. One of those techniques is to turn your story (article, poem, novel, play) upside down and see what falls out. This is the way O’Connor describes the technique in a 1954 letter to her friend, Elizabeth Fenwick, whose novel was rejected.

 

“I hope the novel proves to be retrievable. I enjoy retrieving mine better than I do writing them. Perhaps you finished it under a strain. Try rearranging it backwards and see what you see. I thought this stunt up from my art classes, where we always turn the picture upside down, on its two sides, to see what lines need to be added. A lot of excess stuff will drop off this way.”

 

My excess prose rained down on me on a hot summer day. Most of it was the narrator interpreting the action to the reader, or the writer telling the reader See how clever I am.  No reason to hit the reader over the head. Assume your reader is intelligent. Show, and your reader will follow. These are basic lessons, but we have to constantly relearn them.

 

Another basic truth for most writers comes from Ilana Blumberg’s talk on “Meditation and Action in Nonfiction.” Almost all writers need to slow down. I think this is marvelous advice. Stay with your narrator or character while s/he looks out the kitchen window, rides the subway, climbs the Gilboa. Slow down. Look. See. Smell. Touch. Hear. Give the reader the world filtered through your character/narrator’s imagination or memory. Know that in all description and meditation the seeds of action and plot lay dormant, waiting.

 

I wish you all a year of wonderful writing retreats, stimulating seminars, intelligent writing groups and supportive mentors—whatever it takes to keep you writing your best.

 

Shana Tova,

 

Judy

 

   

 

 

Summer/Kyitz 2009 Newsletter

     from www.WriteInIsrael.com

           creating community for English writers in Israel

 1.Summer writing seminars in Jerusalem – Fiction and Memoir

2. Your accomplishments

3. The Writing Life

 1.  Summer writing seminars in Jerusalem

 Memoir (creative nonfiction):  Ilana Blumberg will teach three days of creative nonfiction on July 20, 21 and 22.

   Day 1 – Who is your narrator? What is the story?

  Day 2 – How do you weave sacred texts into the body of your memoir or personal essay?

  Day 3 –  How do you find the right balance between action (scenes) and meditation/analysis/commentary?

 For each day you sign up, you will receive readings to complete before the seminar.

Classes will consist of discussion and writing exercises. The seminar is open to all; no previous writing experience necessary.

 This is a rare opportunity to learn how to approach personal essays and memoir from a master writer and teacher. Blumberg’s  Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman among Books (University of Nebraska Press, 2007) won the 2008 Sami Rohr Choice Award. Currently, she is an assistant professor of humanities, culture, writing and Jewish Studies at Michigan State University.

 Fiction:  Ehud Havazelet will lead a two-day seminar on August 3 & 4 for people who want to start writing short stories. Before the seminar you will read stories by I.B. Singer, Edgar Allen Poe, Grace Paley and others. During the seminar you will discuss these stories from a writer’s point of view and start your own stories.  No experience needed.

 Havazelet is the prize-winning author of two collections of short stories – What Is It Then Between Us? (Scribners, 1988) and Like Never Before (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998) and a novel, Bearing the Body (FSG, 2007), which will be coming out in Hebrew this summer.  He teaches creative writing in the University of Oregon’s MFA program and the Warren Wilson MFA Program, one of the best in the United States.

 As Coordinator of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, I invite you to take advantage of these marvelous teachers who are coming to Jerusalem this summer. There are still a few places left. (The advanced fiction seminar with Havazelet is full.) For further details, please email me at judylabensohn@gmail.com

 2. Your accomplishments

Many of my students are publishing and winning prizes. Linda Goldberg, a woman from Boston, whom I mentored on-line, has a short story, “Closing Doors,” in The New Vilna Review at www.newvilnareview.com 

Shoshana London Sappir, who participates in my Friday bi-weekly writing workshop, won another Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism  for an article she wrote for Hadassah Magazine about Najem Wali, an Iraqi writer living in Germany.

 Judith Sudilovsky’s “Basma Rides the Bus” received honorable mention in the flash fiction category of the Press 53 Open Awards competition. Her story will appear in the Press 53 Open Awards Anthology in October. Judith participates in my Friday workshop. This is her first fiction publication.

Reva Mann, whose The Rabbi’s Daughter is on the bestseller list in Israel and England and whom I mentored during the first year of her writing the book, has opened a business to help other emerging writers. Her new web site is www.writehelpnow.com

 I’m very proud of the above accomplishments,  just as a midwife must be proud of the births she attends. If any of you who write fiction or creative nonfiction would like to join my Friday morning workshop that reconvenes on October 23, 2009 and meets every other week,  please email judylabensohn@gmail.com

 Gila Green’s story “Reverse” was accepted to Many Mountains Moving for their April 2010 issue.  http://mmminc.org  Green earned her MA in fiction from Bar-Ilan University.

 Linda Zisquit’s translation from the Hebrew of Rivka Miriam’s These Mountains: Selected Poems of Rivka Miriam will be published by Toby Press in 2010. Zisquit is Poetry Coordinator of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing  at Bar-Ilan.

Please send me your publication successes for the November  newsletter .

 3. The Writing Life

 It’s one thing to accept Ann Lamott’s description of “the shitty first draft,” take a deep breath and trudge on filling the page with words. It’s quite another to sense the writing is so bad, the words dead day after day that you don’t even want to reread them. You know  as the words appear on the screen they are as superficial as Dora, popular culture’s icon for three-year-olds. You know you’re creating one-dimensional stereotypes whose lives transpire on a sit-com set, even though you’re not writing humor.

 When this happened to me, I turned to poetry.

My writing life started on Arbor Day in 1954 when my abab ode to the holiday was thumb tacked onto the class bulletin board in the school hallway. What fame! In fourth grade it was Red Cross Day that made my year. Fifth grade I rested, but in sixth grade I wrote the graduation song to the tune of Jingle Jangle and in seventh grade the junior high school alma mater. All these poetic occasions afforded me immediate recognition. After that it was adolescent poetry until the age of twenty-five . . . or last week.

 I never called myself a poet, even though one of my abca poems appears on the same page with poems by Thomas Merton and Robert Herrick, a mere page away from poems by Octavio Paz and William Carlos Williams in a college reader, published unbeknownst to me. I’m a failure at bragging, but I do try to convince myself that my poem in Headway: A Thematic Reader (Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1970) must mean something, that once, in 1966 a streak of inspiration hit me with successful iambs and if it happened once, it can happen again.

 Over the past forty years I’ve written a poem every now and then: twenty in the 1980’s, ten in the ’90’s, three this century. I am returning to them now with the help of a marvelous mentor. What a glorious feeling to finish a poem. Immediate satisfaction, unlike the delayed joy of finishing a novel.

The mentor has me reading poetry again. Randomly, I scanned my shelves and took down Body Rags by Galway Kinnell. There on the first page I discovered “Another Night in the Ruins.” In the most subtle but honest and interesting way, the poem describes what it’s like to feel empty, down, to not be able to write. The poem has fifty-three lines divided into seven stanzas. Here’s the last one:

 7

How many nights must it take

one such as me to learn

that we aren’t, after all, made

from that bird which flies out of its ashes,

that for a man

as he goes up in flames, his one work

is

to open himself, to be

the flames?

 Body Rags, Houghton Mifflin, 1968

 Reading and writing poetry reminds me of the power beauty elasticity magic and depth of words. Hopefully, this reminder will serve me well when I return to my stiff fictional characters.

 Summer is the season for reading and writing. Here’s hoping we all achieve some of our writing goals during the hot summer months ahead and that we learn how to open ourselves, “to be the flames.”

 Warmly,

Judy

 

 

 

 

Iyar/ May  2009  Newsletter

from www.WriteInIsrael.com

      creating community for English writers in Israel

 1.   Jerusalem Summer Writing Seminars 2009

2.  Your publications and classes and tidbits

 3.  The Writing Life

 1.  Jerusalem Summer Writing Seminars

 In 1990 I went to a writing workshop in a town in northern Wales which I could not pronounce because it had three l’s, two y’s and some silent letters. I slept in a room with a woman who, the first night, after my travelling all day from Israel to northern Wales, denied the Holocaust. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep. Fortunately, the third woman in the room was a lively and conscientious recovering alcoholic Catholic American. She defended the Jewish People while I tried to sleep. The Irish Sea made loud, scary noises outside our window.

Such a scenario could never happen to you if you come to a Bar-Ilan writing seminar this summer in Jerusalem.

I’m not sorry I went to Wales, but if I could have stayed in Israel to improve my writing, I would have.

This summer Ehud Havazelet is coming from Oregon to teach a three-day seminar for experienced fiction writers and a two-day seminar for nascent fiction writers. Ehud is a fabulous, prize-winning writer and a gifted teacher. This is a wonderful opportunity for anyone who wants to learn about writing fiction from a master writer.

This summer Ilana Blumberg is coming from Michigan to teach three days of creative nonfiction, specializing in the memoir. Ilana is a prize-winning author and teacher.

These are brilliant people who are excited to teach you in Israel. Please Google them to read about their writing and accomplishments. Both Ehud and Ilana will give you their all if you are willing to devote 1, 2 or more days to nurture your creative lives.

It is not a bargain; this is not Wal-Mart.  One day costs $150; two days – $285; and 3 days $392.  If you come for six days, it will cost you $652.  You can pay in several installments.

The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University is sponsoring these writing seminars. As Coordinator, I would like to turn Jerusalem into a center for summer writing.

Would you like this to happen, too? You can make this happen. Come write in Jerusalem this summer.

(Bar-Ilan is the only place in Israel where you can earn an MA in English, specializing in writing fiction or poetry.)

If you want all the details about summer writing in Jerusalem, email me at judylabensohn@gmail.com

Places are limited. I suggest you not obsess for more than two weeks, because you may find yourself on the Waiting List.

 

2. Your publications and classes and tidbits 

 

•  Yael Politis wrote a novel called The Lonely Tree. It is set in the Etzion Bloc pre-1948. Find out more at http://yaelpolitis.wordpress.com
• Steve Kohn’s first short story ever “Galit and Yossi” was published in the Pesach issue of ESRA Magazine.
• Michael Dickel’s free online ebook The World Behind It, Chaos  is now available at  www.whyvandalism.com   Dickel, along with Sheryl Abbey will be co-editors of the poetry journal Voices Israel 2010. Details at Michael_Dekel@me.com
• Leah Kotkes’ memoir for women is now available. See www.lifework.co.il for details.
• Yonatan Sredni published the story “Sukkah of Dreams” online at www.cyclamensandswords.com The story is part of his MA thesis at Bar-Ilan.
• Sharon Bacher published “Enough to Break Your Heart” in ESRA Magazine.
• Shifrah Devorah Witt, MA, MFA teaches creative writing in Jerusalem and works with writers on manuscript development. Tel. 054-801-8483
• Check out http://fictionwritersreview.com
• Carol Ungar suggests www.momwriterslitmag.com and www.alizahausman.net  
• Check out http://narrativemagazine.com for its Spring writing contest rules. Deadline is July 31, 2009. $20 submission fee.
• http://www.missourireview.org/content/dynamic/view_text.php?text_id=558     is the link for a wonderful essay by Debora Freund that appeared in Missouri     Review. It’s called “A New Youth” and it’s about her moving to Tel Aviv in  1959. Debora lives in Belgium, but is joining at least one of the writing  seminars in Jerusalem this summer! What about you?

 3.  The Writing Life

 I’m in Waiting Mode. In Waiting Mode I check my email every hour to see if an editor at one of the large publishing houses in the US fell madly in love with my book, felt so passionate about the stories on Bethlehem Road that s/he has to buy, edit, produce, and market it at a time when book stores across America are closing and short story collections are about as much in demand as pet pigs. 

Checking email every hour for an acceptance is not a healthy way to live.

I am way off balance.

For the two months before Waiting Mode, I was in Writing Novel Mode. That also wasn’t a healthy way to live. It gave me, for the first time in my life, a visual migraine. Actually, two, since I didn’t get the message after the first one. A visual migraine, also called an “aura,” is when you see the world as a cubist painting.

Being in Writing Novel Mode made me think that writing a novel should be a psychiatric diagnosis. It made me glad never to have written a novel before this, because it is a crazy way to live: no friends, no outings, no home cooked food, no patience. Waking up at 3:30 a.m. if a character discovers something big while I was sleeping.  Working til 7 a.m. to get that big discovery onto the page. Back to bed to catch up on sleep. Up at 11 a.m. to reread the big discovery in the light of day, the discovery that now seems meager, pitiful, limp. 

Way off balance, the Writing Novel Mode. 

I listened to my body after two visual migraines. Slow down, take a rest, relax, my body said in the only language it knows.

I’m trying to relax in Waiting Mode, but it’s like taking a sunbath during a sandstorm.

Sometimes I entertain the fantasy that I could become a yoga teacher. How easy it would be to go to Wingate once a week for two, three, four years. Anything would be easier than trying to conjure characters that breathe and sneeze on the page, lead exciting lives full of action, suspense and depth, and then trying to sell these characters’ stories to a brilliant and successful Manhattan editor who is younger than my own children.

 The question is: Do I have a choice? 

Well, Yes.

Can I stop writing “my novel?” 

Apparently, not.

Can I take away those quotation marks and take the work seriously, relax into it, dive deep and hope my oxygen will last until I come up for breadth without my entire beautiful world crumbling into a series of cubist formations?

Yes, if I write only an hour a day, rest, take a walk, breathe.

It’s all a matter of choice.

 

Have a great month,

 Judy

 

 

 

Nisan-March 2009 Newsletter

from www.WriteInIsrael.com

       creating community for English writers in Israel

Contents

1.  Jerusalem Writing  Seminars, Summer 2009

2.  Your prizes  publications and other odds and ends

3.  Advertising

4. The Writing Life

 

1. Jerusalem Writing  Seminars, Summer 2009

Two fabulous writers and gifted instructors will be teaching in Jerusalem this summer as guests of The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.

Ehud Havazelet, highly-acclaimed author of Bearing the Body will teach a three-day seminar for experienced fiction writers and a two-day seminar for beginners.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity.

Ilana Blumberg, author of Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman among Books , will teach three days of creative nonfiction.

The seminars will take place in the Stern House in Yemin Moshe, Jerusalem.  For full details, email me at judylabensohn@gmail.com  Space is limited, so register early. These are world-class writing instructors coming to Israel to work with you! 

2.  Your prizes and publications

Diane Greenberg’s poems were published in the Spring 2009 issue of Bridges, devoted to  Jewish feminists and their fathers.

Evan Fallenberg’s novel Light Fell is gaining new prizes each week., including being shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award. For the full list, go to www.EvanFallenberg.com

Tania Hershman’s The White Road and Other Stories continues to make waves and win prizes. She has five flash fiction stories published in PANK magazine at www.pankmagazine.com/read/hershman.html  Her story “Straight Up” was the European regional winner of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association’s 2008 short story competition. Go to www.taniahershman.com for full details.

Sue Yaffa Tourkin-Komet’s essay “West of the Dead Sea, My Walking Journey” was accepted in Edenswaterpress, USA.

Ruth Fogelman has a poem in  The Deronda Review, Winter 2009 and in Arc 19, as well.

Laya ’s Meet the New Student from Israel for young adults was published by Mitchell Lane in 2008. It won a Mom’s Choice Award, among others. Visit www.auntlaya.com for further details.

Rachel Gurevich recommends these inspiring talks about creativity and the writing process. Elizibeth Gilbert: A different way to think about creative genius at http://www.ted.org/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html and Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide? at http://www.ted.org/index.php/talks/amy_tan_on_crerativity.html

Moshe Dan’s article appeared in The Jerusalem Post and can be accessed at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236103157748&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Tel Aviv Stories, a collection of short stories published by Ang-Lit in celebration of Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary,   is making a big splash in Israel and England. You can buy it now at Steimatzky’s. Watch your local papers for readings in your area during the coming months. So many of you are published in this anthology. Mazal tov!

Michelle Kushner published an article in Jerusalem Post Metro about the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304696429&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull  Her article on Haim Benyasin, an Ethiopian Prisoner of Zion is at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231167315763&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Shoshana London Sappir writes regular features for Hadassah Magazine.

Yakov Azriel’s In the Shadow of a Burning Bush: Poems on Exodus was published by Time Being Books at the end of 2008.

Zach Helke’s poem “Stav” appeared in the #4 issue of  online magazine Blue Jew Yorker. It was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Gila Green’s White Zion is a finalist for the Doris Bakwin contest of Carolina Wren Press. Her story “The Costume Room” is a finalist for TenTen Fiction Award at http://www.wordsmitten.com/1010fiction.html

Leah Kotkes is organizing The Writer’s Journey Seminar in Jerusalem for May 5, 2009.  This is a full day of lectures from published writers and editors.  For details contact Michelle at mborinstein@013.net   Women only.

Rosally Saltsman’s songs are available at http://www.shemayisrael.com/publicat/rosallysaltsman/

Yael Unterman’s Nehama Leibowitz: Teacher and Bible Scholar , published by Urim Publications, is available from Yael at yaelunt@zahav.net.il

Dov Te’eni’s book Let’s Congress is available through www.letscongress.com

Toby Greenwald edited The Golden Pens of Gush Etzion, a 250-page collection of the the writings of golden agers who participated in Greenwald’s creative writing class. Orders through Dalia OrLev at nessara@zahav.net.il

Sharon Bacher’s essay on singing appeared in ESRA Magazine and is available at http://sharonswritespo.blogspot.com/

Judy Labensohn’s  essay “Leaving Babylon: A Walk through the Jewish Divorce Ceremony,”  which first appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Issue 19, will be reprinted in Text Wrestling: A college textbook for entry level reading comprehension courses, edited by David Fleming.

3. Advertising

 Fern Reiss has excellent marketing ideas for writers. Visit http://www.associationofwriters.com/Archive/NL_2009_01_06.php

Shifrah Devorah Witt, MFA,  teaches creative writing and manuscript development in Jerusalem. 054-801-8483

Find not only your writer’s voice. Sing!  A choir in the Sharon is looking for you. Call Sharon Bacher at 050 314 5255 for details.

Gila Green teaches writing in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh. Tel. 02-999 9717

Amanda Cohen edits children’s and adult fiction and runs a creative writing group in Tel Aviv. Tel. 054 668 6503

Dara Barnat teaches creative writing at Beit Berl College. email darabarnat@yahoo.com

 4. The Writing Life

As full as this newsletter is, it would have been moreso if I had gotten it out on time, say mid-January. Due to my lateness, deadlines passed, events happened and you never heard about them. I apologize to those who asked me to publicize an event at the end of February, beginning of March. I had a good excuse for once: I was writing, creative, that is.

Usually it works the other way: I have a good excuse for not writing creative.

What got me fired up enough to avoid writing this monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly newsletter was the interest of an agent in Bethlehem Road, my collection of short stories. The agent has been encouraging me over the past sixteen months, but once he accepted the collection, he wanted an introductory essay and once he accepted the essay he wanted an idea for a novel and once he accepted the idea for a novel, he wanted the first 30-50 pages.

I started writing the novel the way many young people had sex in the 1960’s – from a distance, as an exercise, a form of play, not serious. But just as you can’t remain dissociated from your body while at the same time trying to be honest for long, so too, you can’t be casual about your novel. After a week of writing, I found myself looking forward to sitting at the computer to find out what was going to happen to my characters. I started to respect them, listen to them, open myself to their stories. What started as a fling turned into a serious relationship.

Compared to “my novel,” everything paled, including this newsletter.

Finally, last week I sent out 33 pages. Since the agent has not yet responded, I can share your publication news. So many of you have told me that you appreciate receiving this newsletter, that it gets you writing, submitting, finding a class or a mentor, taking an unfinished poem or story out of your desk drawer. That’s heartwarming for me to hear. Continue to send me your publication news. I promise to do my part, but if you don’t hear from me for another few months, it’s a good sign: I’m writing a novel. 

Enjoy Nisan.

Hope to see you in Jerusalem at the fabulous Summer Writing Seminars.

Warmly,

Judy

Chanukah-December 2008 Newsletter

from www.WriteInIsrael.com

    creating community for English writers in Israel

Contents:

1.  Writing events and resources

2.  Your publications

3. Calls for submissions

3.  The Writing Life

 

Writing events and resources

• I will be leading a creative nonfiction class every other Sunday evening from 5-7 PM at Evan Fallenberg’s Writing Studio, Moshav Bitan Aharon (north of Netanya).  The class will begin at the end of January. For registration, email Evan at evanfallenberg@gmail.com
• Oren Safdie, architect turned playwright, will read from a new play and discuss an old play on Tues. Dec. 23rd, 7 PM at the Stern House in Yemin Moshe, Jerusalem. Both plays deal with architecture in modern life. This program is sponsored by the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, of which I serve as Coordinator. If you are interested in attending, email me at judylabensohn@gmail.com and I will send you the play to read. Entrance fee – NIS 40.
• “From Brainstorm to Book: Yes, You Can Write a Book ” is a seminar (for women only) presented by Esther Heller, Editor-in-Chief at Targum Press and Bassi Gruen, Editorial Dir. at Targum. Mon. Jan 5, 9:30-noon at the Targum office in Jerusalem. Fee: NIS 80. Details: seminars@targum.com or Tel. 02-651-3355.
• Morning and afternoon writing classes available with Shifrah Devorah Witt, MA, MFA in Jerusalem. Tel. 054-801-8483
• Gila Green will lead  memoir and fiction workshops at Touro College, Jerusalem, as part of the Continuing Adult Education program. Classes begin week of Jan. 12, 2009. Contact israel@touro.edu for information and registration
• Mike Scheidemann, Pres. of Voices, Israel, announces a poetry festival with Richard Berengarten. Jan. 5-10, 2009 in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and week-end workshop at Kibbutz Sheffayim. Details: Mike at 04-659-8329 or mikeschd@yizrael.org.il For info. on Berengartem, visit http://www.richardburns.eu/site/Biography.html
• If you too are coping with the loss of a loved one, check out Jeffrey Green’s blog at http://marjef.blogspot.com 
• Jennie Feldman, who has taught two successful summer semesters at Bar-Ilan’s creative writing graduate program is available for tutorials in Jerusalem. A graduate of Oxford University, she is the author of two books of prize-winning poetry. Contact jennie@netvision.net.il
• Fern Reiss of www.PublishingGame.com has launched the International Association of Writers.  Check it out at www.AssociationofWriters.com  to see how it can help you market your talents.
• Lloyd Masel writes: For classical music lovers, visit www.classical-music-israel.com
• Evan Fallenberg  is hosting Joan Leegant at The Studio on January 7, 2009 for a reading and on Jan. 29th for a full-day master class on Story Structure in Fiction. Details: www.evanfallenberg.com
• Evan Fallenberg will read at Tmol Shilshom in Jerusalem on Tues., Dec. 30, 2008 at 7 PM with Australian author Leah Kaminsky. Moderator is Prof. Michael Kramer, Bar-Ilan University.

2. Your publications

• Joan Leegant’s first novel was accepted by W.W. Norton for publication in 2010. Joan’s first book, An Hour in Paradise, was also published by Norton. The new novel awaits a title. Joan has been teaching the fiction workshop in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, to the delight of her students.
• Valerie Farber’s City of Refuge has received nice reviews that can be accessed at www.cityofrefugenovel.com  Valerie is available for a book talk and Powerpoint presentation about her novel, set in the time of the Judges. Contact VFarber@nds.com
• Pessie Frankel and Yocheved Leah Perkal have published a new book, Mrs. Honig’s Cakes #3: Fancies and Fantasies for Children. Hamodia Publishing        
• Gavriel Reisner, former Jerusalemite who teaches AP literature at the High School of Economics and Finance near Wall Street and an online survey course of English lit. for the Michlala (Jerusalem College for Women) has recently published poems  in And Then … and Home Planet News.
• Dara Barnat, poet and writing teacher in the Tel Aviv and coastal area, will be publishing a collection of her poetry entitled Headwind Migration. The collection is being released by Pudding House Publications.
• Sarah Kreimer’s article in the Jerusalem Post Magazine  of Nov. 28, 2008 about olive-picking near Hebron drew much attention.  Read it at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1227702342874
• The next Voices magazine will publish two poems by Rena Siegel Yechieli. She has also published in Midstream. 
• Carol Ungar’s short fiction on mothering is a selected short of the month by Literary Mama for Dec. 2008. Read it at www.literarymam.com/interact/blog/archives/002288.htmliterary
• An excerpt from The Lost Daughter by Esther Heller can be read  at http://www.targum.com/product.php/381/the-lost-daughter
• http://www.shofarlitreview.com/5601.html  is the site of Yael Unterman’s “In My Place” on the Shofar Literary Review.
• Am Oved has published a collection of poetry written in English by Lisa Katz, Jerusalem poet, translator and teacher, and translated into Hebrew by Shachar Bram. Shichzur in Hebrew; Reconstruction in English.

3. Calls for submissions

• Horizons,  a monthly magazine serving  Orthodox Jewish women in Israel and the US,  is looking for talented writers.  Features and fiction: 1,000-3,500 words; poetry: up to 20 lines.  If you’d like to pitch a proposal,  email horizonsed@targum.com
• An internet magazine dedicated to traditional Judaism is looking for poetry and short prose under 5,000 words. Contact http://www.shofarlitreview.com
•  Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative has been sponsoring a personal essay contest since 1995. Check out guidelines at http://www.tiny-lights.com/contest.php
• January 31, 2009 is the deadline for the New Millennium Writings contest for fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Details at http://wwwnewmillenniumwritings.com/awards.php
• Can you write a memoir in six words?  If so, submit it to www.smithmag.net/sixwords/

4. The Writing Life

       I’ve been doing a balancing act all day in front of the computer, not between description and dialogue or back story and present action, not between emails and poetry, but between belly muscles and feet, lower back and hips. Yes, I am sitting on the famous Balance Ball, originally developed in the 1960’s for physical therapy, savior in schools for hyperactive children and solution for writers who hate stasis.

        During the past two weeks since I started using the blue ball, I’ve been able to sit at the computer longer than usual and have no aches, as I used to. Also, I have not fallen backwards, but have managed to keep both feet on the ground.  My concentration has been exceptional, even at 3:30 in the morning when I awake from jetlag.

      According to the literature, not only am I writing, but I am also improving my posture and strengthening my core muscles, those between the chest and the legs for non-scientists.

     As I type this sentence I am bouncing and I feel a n enjoyable senseof rhythm. Uswually I write without bouncinjg.

     I see from all the mistakes in those two lines that bouncing is not good  for spelling.

     The Balance Ball legitimizes wiggling. “There is a neurological pathway that goes from your body’s balance and movement system to the alert system in the brain,” says a web page on Balance Balls from http://life.gaiam.com . Movement actually allows for alertness and attention. In response to the ball’s instability, the body instinctively and continually moves its core muscle groups.

     Remember all those nasty teachers who told you to stop wiggling in class? Turns out they were wrong and you were right. Wiggling is good for the brain. It helps you focus. 

     .

     Currently, I am working on a story  which feels like pulling molars embedded in steel gums, working with only cotton string and a blunt knife. I wish writing weren’t this hard. Haven’t I been doing it long enough to know how to do it?  Apparently not. Some writers, much more published than I, also say that it gets harder as you get older. Maybe this is because the cells in the brain get coated with plaque and memory slacks. I don’t know, but I wonder if violinists have the same problem.

     I hate to think that sitting on the ball is making the writing harder, even though it is more comfortable. What I would like to think is that this story, if it ever gets written, will be the best ever, a real breakthrough in voice, content and structure. Then I will be able to say that I owe it all to my bouncy blue air-filled elastic soft PVC, made-in-China balance ball.

 

A Happy Bouncy Chanukah to all!

 

Warmly ,

 

Judy

 

 

Cheshvan-November 2008 Newsletter

from www.WriteInIsrael.com

        creating community for English writers in Israel

 

Contents

1.  Your publications and news

2. The Writing Life

 

1.  Your publications and news

• Yael Unterman’s solo performance play “After Eden: The first family conflict,” which has been performed in the US, UK and Australia, will be performed in Jerusalem on Nov. 13th, Modi’in on Nov. 22nd and  Tel Aviv on Nov. 27th. The play is preceded by a Bibliodramatic study of Genesis, Ch. 4. For details, contact Yael at yaelunt@zahav.net.il Yael is a graduate of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.
• Susan Kennedy, an experienced editor, is available to look at manuscripts, theses and other general or literary work.  Tel. 0524-462302.
• Jennifer Lang “finally got brave enough to send out some stories to various literary reviews/journals and received many rejections. But amongst the rejections, there was one acceptance letter.” You can read Jennifer’s story in Vol 10 of the South Loop Review at http://english.colum.edu/southloop/archive/vol10/vol10.html
• Rachel Gurevich’s poem “Five Seeds” appears in Literary Mama at www.literarymama.com/poetry/archives/002179.html
• Linda Goldberg had two poems published in Voices Israel 2008. Her first book of short stories Here I Am has been published and can be purchased through her website. http://www.lindajgoldberg.com
• Shelley Leveson, currently a student in The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program at Bar-Ilan and a publishing mavin, published a work of creative nonfiction in the SNReview. Check out http://www.snreview.org/0108Leveson.html Shelley would also like to share with you this website about publishing: http://newpages.com/litmags/index.htm  Once a story has been published, even on a small online ezine, no other journal will touch it, says Shelley. For more information, contact Shelley at sleveson@pacbell.net
• Leah Kotkes’ website www.lifework.co.il promotes Jewish women writers from around the world. Her online journal for Jewish women readers and writers can be found at http://www.lifework.co.il/newsletters/newsletter1/newsletter.html It includes a “Memoir Writing Lesson” by Vera Schwarcz and lots of other valuable advice.
• Karen Kay Craigo, editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review writes in a newsletter that now is a good time to submit material to MAR, before the next big rush in early January. To read about the journal, visit www.http://www.bgsu.edu/studentlife/organizations/midamericanreview/index2.html

2.  The Writing Life

Often I feel like starting this short column by asking “What writing life?”  Ever since I finished  Bethlehem Road, my collection of eleven stories, I haven’t had the vaguest interest in writing anything longer than Yes We Can.   On the other hand, I’ve experienced greater joy in the kitchen, delighting in the simple pleasure of throwing things together in a pot without measuring anything, using the same abandon I use in a first draft.  These dishes are not always edible, but so what?  I have a compost pile that, like the waste basket, accepts everything.

Ever since finishing Bethlehem Road, I’ve spent more  time on the yoga mat. By Pesach, I will be able to stand on my head without the support of a wall. This practice may be more valuable for my psyche than  writing. The ultimate way to live, probably, would be writing while standing on one’s head.  If I master this, I promise to lead a one-day retreat to help others learn the art.  Yes we can.

I’m also spending more time reading. Two books that I’ve enjoyed  lately are After Dark by Haruki Murakami and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. 

 I wish reading and writing didn’t involve so much sitting. Bored by the chair, I asked my brother, who works for the Sports Authority in the US, about an enormous inflated ball that he uses when sitting at his desk.  He highly recommends it. I will pick one up in Cleveland over Thanksgiving. Then I’ll be able to bounce when I’m sitting in front of the computer.  My writing, I assume, will become more lively.

I received an encouraging email from one of the agents in the New York literary agency where I sent Bethlehem Road. “I am very enthusiastic” were her words, the words I carved into the door of my office, the words that made me cry, not a teary cry, but one in which the abdominal muscles contracted in a deep way, almost like when I heard I was a grandmother.  “Very enthusiastic about your collection,”  she wrote.  I expected a BUT in the next sentence. But it wasn’t there.

Then the markets crashed, crash, are crashing. If Bethlehem Road never gets published, I will blame Lehman Brothers and greedy hedge fund salespeople. It’s so much easier to blame others than  take responsibility for my own stories that may lack proper pacing or good sex. 

I’m not writing, but I am confident that one day, after I bounce around the room and stand on my head and cook floor soap soup, I will want to hanker down to some character who has a problem, some  voice that is dying to get out of the dark closet. On that day  time will stand still as it does when you are falling in love or when you’re immersed in writing a scene. On that day  I’ll remind myself that even when I don’t write, I’m still a writer.

Yes I will.

Warmly,

Judy

Rosh Hashana 2008 Newsletter

from www.WriteInIsrael.com

creating community for English writers in Israel

Contents

1. One-day Writing Retreat on Oct. 30 and other goodies

2. Your publications, achievements and awards

3. The Writing Life

 

1.  One-Day Retreat and other goodies

• Evan Fallenberg is inaugurating The Studio for Writers (and Readers) near his home in Moshav Bitan Aharon by hosting a one-day writing retreat on Thursday, October 30, 2008 from 9 am – 5:15 pm.

 Participants will attend three separate sessions. Joan Leegant, author of An Hour in Paradise, will discuss taking risks in your writing.  Evan, author of Light Fell, will lead a workshop on getting started (or picking up from where you left off).  I will lead a discussion on the segmented essay, a structure that invites you to mine your obsessions. 

The retreat is open to writers at all levels. Seating is limited; first come, first served. The NIS 420 price includes a kosher dairy lunch at Capanna Restaurant, a 5-minute walk from The Studio.

To register, send a check for NIS 420 to Evan at  POB 372 Bitan Aharon, Israel 40294, along with your name, postal address, phone number and email. Email Evan for instructions to The Studio. For more info about the presenters, visit www.evanfallenberg.com, www.joanleegant.com and www.WriteInIsrael.com

• Gila Green, who earned her MA in fiction from Bar-Ilan University and has published stories around the world, will be teaching a ten-week memoir course and a fiction course through Touro College’s Continuing Education in Jerusalem. For details, contact Gila at greens@netvision.net.il
• In August Lee Gutkind gave a wonderful 3-day seminar on creative nonfiction through Bar-Ilan’s Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing, which I coordinate. Now we are all invited to the 2008 Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Conference in Pittsburgh next month, Oct. 2-4. Registration is open at www.creativenonfiction.org
• Shifrah Devorah Witt (MA and MFA) offers writing classes in Nachlaot, Jerusalem. Tel. 054 801 8483.
• Jennie Feldman offers private poetry mentoring in Jerusalem. email: jennie@netvision.net.il
• Tenth Annual Jewish Children’s Book Writers’ Conference in New York on Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008, 9 am – 5 pm at the 92nd Street Y. Registration deadline is Nov. 17. email library@92Y.org for registration form and info.
• Sarah Shapiro will offer a workshop for reading and writing poetry in Jerusalem. email sarahkit@netvision.net.il for details.
• Oct. 7, 2008 is the deadline for the 19th International Reuben Rose Poetry contest. First prize is $500. Judge is Richard Berengarten, founder of the Annual Cambridge Poetry Festival in Cambridge, England. For details, http://poetry-voices.8m.com/

2.  Your publications, achievements and awards

• Evelyn Abel had four poems accepted by Bridges for its fall issue.
• Valerie Farber’s novel, City of Refuge, has been published and can be purchased through the website www.cityofrefugenovel.com and through Amazon.
• Rachel Gurevich has a steady writing position writing about infertility for About.com, a New York Times Company. See http://infertility.about.com/  She had a poem, “Five Seeds,” accepted for the “Desiring Motherhood” Oct. issue of Literary Mama (http://www.literarymama.com/ ). Rachel also did the 3-day novel contest at the end of August. “What an awesome contest,” she writes. “Best writing exercise ever…” (http://www.3daynovel.com/ ) Rachel teaches writing through the Long Ridge Writers Group.
• Tania Hershman’s first collection of short stories, The White Road and Other Stories (Salt Modern Fiction) came out on September 1st.  See www.thewhiteroadandotherstories.com   Tania edits The Short Review: www.theshortreview.com  Recently, she was one of three winners of the 2008 Biscuit Flash Fiction competition and a finalist in the Binnacle’s 140 word Ultra Short Competition. Her 140-word story will be published in the 2008 Ultra Short issue. Two flash stories were broadcast in July on Rethink Daily’s Sharp Things podcast and two other flash stories will be published in Magazine Minima and on a postcard by the Tin Parachute Postcard Review. This fine writer is on a roll.
• Ruth Mason published an op-ed piece in The Jerusalem Post on Shatil’s Ethiopian Domestic Violence Coalition. A piece she wrote for Naamat Woman on Ethiopian women won a Simon Rockower Award. Currently, Ruth is making a documentary film on Ethiopian names.
• Sharon Bacher’s “60 Years and Here We Are” appeared in Perth, Australia’s “Maccabean.”
• Shoshana London Sappir won first place in the Simon Rockower awards for “Story of Aliyah” for the feature she wrote about Russian immigrants that appeared in Hadassah Magazine.
• Esther Susan Heller’s website www.jewishwriting.com has been selected as one of the “101 Best Websites for Writers 2008″ by Writer’s Digest.
• Evelyn Fisher Solomonov won 2nd place for Personal Essay from the Simon Rockower Award of the American Jewish Press Association for “The Worst Knock of All.” The piece appeared in Hadassah Magazine,  June 24, 2008.
• Ruth Fogelman had four poems in the recent issue of The Deronda Review.
• Eva Eliav has three poems coming out in the next issue of Stand magazine. Eva sent the poems in January 2006. They were accepted in Feb. 2007. “Writers need patience,” she says.
• Ruth Abraham has just begun the MA in fiction at Bar-Ilan. Her book When Words Have Lost Their Meaning: Alzheimer’s Patients Communicate Through Art (Praeger) was translated into Korean.  ”The script is beautiful,” she writes, “ - alien, mysterious and unfathomable, but very aesthetic. The first letter of each chcapter is preceded by a compressed picture of one of my patient’s artworks. This small detail adds an Asian mystique to my original text.”
• Ira Director had two poems published in Voices Israel 2008.

I hope all these accomplishments inspire you as much as they inspire me.  Send me notification of your publications, achievements and awards for the next newsletter.  Keep submitting  your writing.  Know that in most cases, publications rest on an iceberg of  rejections. Create your iceberg.

3. The Writing Life

Many of you have asked me if I finished my book like I said I would in the June newsletter. Your questions go beyond natural curiosity. I hear in your voices the hope that I did complete the manuscript, because if I finished a book according to a schedule plan, then you can too.

Of course I finished. I couldn’t tell 400-500 people I’m going to do something and then not follow through. In fact, telling you my plan was part of psyching myself up to do it.
Not only did I finish the manuscript Bethlehem Road, a collection of eleven short stories, and mail it to the potentially interested agent on August 28th at 11:30 a.m. from the post office on – Where else?  – Bethlehem Road, but I also was relaxed about the process. This relaxation came from the fact that I had a schedule. I never had to wonder when I would find time to write. I merely looked at the calendar and saw that on Monday I would write from 3-6 PM and on Friday from 9-12 AM, etc.  From the start, I always scheduled chunks of three hours. I also planned which story I would work on and when. I gave myself deadlines for each story.

For me this was a totally artificial way to work, but if you want to complete a project, it’s a way that works.  I know that instead of doing this newsletter, I could be rewriting some of the newer stories. I know I could make myself crazy for another 6-18 months, but I don’t want to.  If a  publisher bites and asks for rewrites, then I will do so. If nobody wants the manuscript, at least I reached my June 2008 goal.

The day after I completed the manuscript, I was walking down Bethlehem Road. I thought I had finished with the street and the neighborhood where I had lived for thirty-three years –  the houses, shopkeepers, neighbors, traffic arrangements, fruit stands, hairdressers, corner groceries, the sidewalks, street signs, memories and history. I thought I had poured it all out on the page. I thought my writing these stories was my way of separating from Ba’aka, the neighborhood whose main artery is Bethlehem  Road, the place where I raised my three children. So I was shocked to notice an even stronger love for the place as I strolled from Rivka Street down to Yiftach.

I’m still attached, even though I live in Beit Zayit, a moshav located .3 kilometers from Jerusalem’s city limits and a twenty-five minute drive from Ba’aka. I chuckled when I found myself hoping  I would be able to write Bethlehem Road, Volume Two.  After all, I hadn’t given  my downstairs neighbor who checked the stairwell for suspicious objects every morning at 4:30 a.m. in his striped pajamas, his due; nor the owner of the local makolet who accessed 24-roll packages of toilet paper by striking the rafters with his broomstick; nor the legendary nursery schoolteacher who taught two-year olds that peace could be achieved through singing in Chinese, Spanish, French, Hebrew and Arabic; nor the barber who cut little boys’ hair, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips; nor the butcher who didn’t like people and took out his meanness on chickens.
This welling up of new ideas for stories startled me. Like most writers, I was afraid that once I had finished my current project, I would have nothing more to write. The opposite occurred. Once the current eleven stories were on the page and in the mail, there was room for new material to percolate.

A secondary gain of committing to a writing schedule was that I was able to committ to a vacation for the beginning of September. I knew I would be ready for yoga and singing on the island of Samos by September 5th, having immersed myself in the lives of my characters all summer.  

And so it was.

I wish you all a happy, healthy New Year.
May you fulfill all your writing goals.
If you will it, to paraphrase our Zionist father, your dreams can turn into books.

Warmly,

Judy

June 2008 Newsletter

from www.WriteInIsrael.com

Creating community for English writers in Israel

1.  Shards
2.  Your Publications
3.  The Writing Life

1. Shards

• WriteInIsrael mourns the untimely passing of Judi Widetsky of Tel Aviv, who added color, laughter and enthusiasm to many writing retreats.
• Reva Mann, author of the best-selling The Rabbi’s Daughter is now reading manuscripts of memoir, essays and fiction. She can advise you on the publishing process. Contact reva_l@inter.net.il
• Boston writer and teacher Joan Leegant, author of An Hour in Paradise, is looking for a furnished flat in Tel Aviv near the beach. Oct. ‘08-April ‘09. One bedroom, two studies. Please email Joan at Leegant@rcn.com
• Tamar Ansh, author of four books and food columnist, is available to answer your questions about article writing, publishing contracts and more.  Email tansh@actcom.net.il
• Leah Kotkes, features editor for Binah Magazine, is hosting The Writer’s Journey on Tues. July 15, 2008 at her home in Har Nof, Jerusalem. Guest speaker will be Vera Schwarcz,  Chair of East Asian Studies Program at Wesleyan University in CT.  Schwarcz is the author of Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory.  She will lead a workshop on “The Craft of Memoir: How to Write Better About the Subject Closest to You.”     Kotkes will lead a workshop on “Story: Construction and Implementation.” For details, email Kotkes at lifework@012.net.il
• On July 7, 2008 Shifra Devorah Witt will lead a writing tour to Kever Dan and Moshav Yesodot on “Shmitta in the Fields,” together with licensed tour guide Zipporah Malka Heller and international Shmitta expert Chava Rifka Landau. Pre-registration by June 30th. Call Shifra at 054-801-8483.
• DCConnexions Magazine for Teenage Girls , a new teenage monthly magazine is looking for articles for 14-20 year olds. Articles or stories on friendship, self-esteem, leadership, peer pressure, etc. “Kosher yet open-minded.” email DMC2DAY@gmail.com
• Asher Gelman (thedancingasher@aol.com) organizes open mike at Cafesito at 33 Bograshov. Contact him for details if you want to perform  poetry, prose, music, etc.
• Mima’amakim is calling for submissions – “quality writing and authentic Jewish experience (up for serious debate).” Poetry, short fiction, visual art. Questions and submissions to Makim08@gmail.com
• Mike Tannenbaum is running a writing workshop in Tel Aviv. “Nuts & bolts analysis of foremost fiction writers + participants’ own work.” Thurs. evening, 6-8. Call MIke at 03-604-3110.
• Leah Kotkes has launched a website at www.lifework.co.il to promote Jewish women writers.
• Arie meir has started “Speechless,” a public speaking club in Jerusalem. In Hebrew. Free. Tel. 054-318-5870
• Reminder: Write a story 600-3,000 words that takes place in Tel Aviv  and submit it by July 31 to the anthology celebrating Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary.  Email Shelley Goldman at ang_lit.press@yahoo.com
• Diane Greenberg leads creative writing workshops in Jerusalem (Talpiot).  Small groups begin throughout the year. Tel. Diane at 02-671-9546.

2.  Your Publications

• Michael Loftus had an article published in the Jerusalem Post Magazine on  May 8th.
• Shifrah Devorah Witt published Inside Secrets to the Craft of Writing: A Personal Guide to Actualizing Your Potential. The book includes over fifty writing exercises from a Jewish context. You can purchase the book and find out about upcoming workshops with Witt at Consciousliving@hotmail.com
• On May 19, 2008 Idele Ross had an Independence Day article in The Detroit Jewish News online entitled “An American-Born Israeli.”
• Mike Benn of Kfar Saba has published his three-part “A Moving Experience” in the last three issues of The Jerusalem Post Real Estate Supplement.  He also published a piece in the Jewish community paper of Perth, Australia.
• Sarah Kreimer wrote an op-ed about Jerusalem for The Jerusalem Post on June 1, as a result of which she was interviewed by the new Jerusalem Bureau Chief for The New York Times.
• Jessica Apple published an essay, “A Fortress Called Home” on May 29 on www.nextbook.org
• Susan Susser had a story accepted at Bridges 13.2 “About a Kaddish.”
• Sue Tourkin-Komet has 2 pages of  publishing accomplishments. Here’s a brief excerpt.  She had a poem accepted for publication in Exit 13 Magazine in New Jersey. Her essay “A Rectangular Day in the Neighborhood” will appear in The Deronda Review. Her artwork will appear  with two of her poems in The Annual Israel-Voices Poetry 2008 Anthology. Poetica Magazine has accepted her poetry for its next issue and The Matrix Literary Magazine of New Zealand published her essay on studying Russian at Jerusalem’s Beit Ha’am. 

Send me your publication acceptances. It helps other writers if you spread the word about your own success.

3. The Writing Life

Each stage of writing has its difficulties. I, for instance, have to finish a book by the end of the summer and send it to an agent. The task seemed daunting, especially after the birth of my second grandchild, the success of the literary evenings at Beit Bar-Ilan in Jerusalem and my excitement to organize more, the growing demands of my day job at Bar-Ilan, my developing relationship with grandchild no. 1 and my decision to promote a good relationship with grandchild no. 2, a visit from my son and his wife from abroad, various smachot, funerals, unexpected visitors, yoga, shopping, gardening, socializing, private mentoring, my beloved Friday workshop, forty-five minute power walks,  and sweeping the ants from the living room floor on a regular basis. How could I possibly finish a book?

The task seemed daunting and impossible,  until I sat with my friend David Kurz, who does  organizational and individual coaching.  David taught me how to plan.  Planning is something I never learned in ninth grade when I did learn how to take notes and  type, two of the most valuable lessons I learned in school.  Planning is something you learn in the army, maybe, if you’re an officer, or if you’re an MA candidate in Business  Administration. Planning is something you do instinctively, if you have a few children who need to eat on a regular basis. But planning to write or complete a book?

After one planning session my anxiety dissipated. Rather than saying “Oy. I’ll never be able to do this,” I said,  “Hey. I can. And I will.”

Here’s how it works. First you state what you want to do (goal) by when (deadline).  In my case it looked like this: I want to send the completed manuscript of Bethlehem Road  to an agent by August 31st.

Then you make a list of all the tasks that need to get done in order to reach the deadline.  In my case it looked like this: Finish one story; rewrite four stories; arrange stories; finish the research by walking on Derech Beit Lechem; edit stories for names and addresses;  send text to printer; review complete text; send to agent.

Then you define a  time frame for each task.  This is such an unwriterly thing to do, but do it you must if you want to reach your goal.

What seemed like an impossible, daunting chore boiled down to only forty-four hours of work. Even if I was stingy, so it was only sixty hours of work.

Then David instructed me to make  a calandar for June, July and August. I crossed off the hours in which I work or have other committments. The empty white spaces were for my book project. I filled them in in three-hour segments. I highlighted them in hot green.  It was fun, but then came the hard part. I had to transfer these new book committments that had specific dates and times to my regular calendar, my yoman.  I balked.  David (david.kurz.ezrach@gmail.com) asked me if I was committed to my goal. I wanted to throw something at him, but instead,  I wrote down the committments in my holy yoman.

Planning goes against everything I ever thought about writing, but if I want to see my stories in a book, I have to plan, which means I can’t live with each story for six months and rewrite it twenty times and think about every sentence for three hours.  I don’t have that luxury anymore. Time is running out.  If I obsess about each story for another eight years, I will have too many hip pains to go on a  book tour.

See, I’m thinking positively these days, to get me through this last crunch. I’m thinking of the book tour for the book that isn’t  finished, that has no contract, no publisher, no cover.  I’m thinking of starting the tour in Omaha, Nebraska and wearing my hot pink Chinese jacket with a new pair of Italian slacks, purchased with this tour in mind.  In the past, I would call this kind of thinking  delusions of grandeur.  David has taught me to reframe my fantasizing and call it “goal setting.” Even appearing on Oprah suddenly seems doable, though I might need a new pair of shoes.

Goals and plans were never part of my repertoire, but they are now.

All of which is to say that I don’t have time for another newsletter this summer, because I will be busy doing what I say I want to do: WriteInIsrael.

Think of me while you’re at the beach or at a movie,  travelling through Spain or visiting family in the Berkshires.  I’ll be here in Beit Zayit at my desk until August 31st, when, according to my yoman, I can celebrate for two hours. 

A joyous summer and good luck with your own writing goals.

Warmly,

Judy

   

 

 

May 2008 Newsletter from www.WriteInIsrael.com

creating community for English writers in Israel

Contents

1. Goings On

2. Your Publications and Awards

3. The Writing Life

1. Goings On

• The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University is sponsoring a 3-day seminar in Jerusalem on creative nonfiction with Lee Gutkind, “the leading figure behind the creative nonfiction movement,” according to Harper’s Magazine. Gutkind will deal with the structure of the classic essay and creative nonfiction book, discuss the personal vs. the public stance of the author, book proposals and marketing strategies. There will be short, overnight assignments.

 The seminar, August 12 – 14, from 9 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., will take place in a beautiful villa in    Jerusalem’s Yemin Moshe neighborhood, across from the walls of the Old City. This seminar is open to all – writers, journalists, poets, residents, tourists, but space is limited, so register now. The cost is $400 or NIS 1400 until June 1st. After June 1st, $450 or NIS 1575.  Students in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program pay half price.

Please send your check in dollars, shekels or Euros made out to Bar-Ilan University to Judy Labensohn, English Dept., Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel.  On a separate piece of paper, print your name, address, phone number and email address and mail it with the check.

Registration includes all materials, lectures, and hot and cold drinks. It does not include meals or lodgings. There are six restaurants within a 5-minute walk of the villa. Each day there will be a 2-hour lunch break. For lodgings, Yemin Moshe is close to Jerusalem’s YMCA and Beit Shmuel and five major hotels.

If you write personal essays, travel pieces, history, political analysis, nature essays; if you have an idea for a nonfiction essay or book, this is the seminar for you. Check out www.leegutkind.com and http://creativenonfiction.org

I urge you to take advantage of this rare opportunity. Space is limited, so register now.

• The International Writers Festival at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem, May 11-15, 2008. Details at www.mishkenot.org
• Writing Workshops with Sarah Shapiro in Jerusalem: May 20 and 27 in evenings or May 21 and 28 mornings. For info. contact Sarahkit@netvision.net.il
• Reva Mann (The Rabbi’s Daughter) is available to help you improve your manuscript. Details: www.revamann.com  Contact Reva at reva_l@inter.net.il
• Fern Reiss can teach you how to get media attention for your book. Visit www.PublishingGame.com
• Until May 8th you can bid on manuscript critiques with notable authors associated with the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in poetry, fiction, crreative nonfiction, writing for children and young adults. Go to http://stores.ebay.com/carolines-Hunger-Mountain-Store and www.hungermtn.org for details
• Mima’amakim is looking for poetry, visual art and fiction. Send to Makim08@gmail.com by June 15th.
• For a wonderful newsletter go to http://writersrelief.com/may08.asp I haved used the services of Writer’s Relief and highly recommend them for helping you market your writing.
• The Writer’s Journey Seminar is in Jerusalem on May 13, 2008 at the Reich Hotel. For women only. Details: lifework@012.net.il
• Call for submissions of personal experiences and reflections about global warming. Visit http://www.facingthechange.org
• Call for submissions to SageWoman Magazine on the theme of Beginnings; poetry or nonfiction (5,000 word MAX) Email: Anne Niven, Editor with word attachment to info@sagewoman.com
• Call for submissions to Persimmon Tree, short stories and essays by women over 60; Nan Gefen, Editor; editor@persimmontree.org

2. Your Publications and Awards

• Evan Fallenberg, author of Light Fell (Soho, 2008), was a finalist for a PEN Translation Prize for his translation of Meir Shalev’s A Pigeon and a Boy.
• Tania Hershman, editor of www.TheShortReview.com has had stories accepted by Ranfurly Review; Juice: The Journal of the Ordinary; Mad Hatter’s Review; Greatest Uncommon Denominator; SouthWord; and Riffing on Strings (an anthology inspired by string theory). Her story “Drinking Vodka in the Afternoon” has been longlisted for the People’s College Short Story Competition.  Another story was shortlisted for the Fish publishing One Page Short Story Prize. Tania hails from England and lives in Jerusalem.
• Gila Green’s “Conversations on Lichen Street” will be published by Pilot Pocket Books 4, Toronto. “Mom’s Visit” will appear in Yuan Yang: A Journal of Hong Kong and International Literature.
• Judy Gray’s essay on the Ben Yehudah midrachov appeared in In Jerusalem on April 11, 2008.
• Michael Diamond’s print-on-demand book is available at http://m.diamond.il.googlepages.com  Michael lives in Beersheva.
• Jessica Apple’s story “A Great Civil War,” which she wrote while she was in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program at Bar-Ilan, just came out in the Bellevue LIterary Review. Jessica lives in Tel Aviv.
• Jennifer Lang’s “une tete americaine” was accepted for publication in vol. 10 of South Loop Review.  Jennifer had made a goal of getting one personal story published this year and reached her goal.
• Valerie Farber’s book City of Refuge, most of which she wrote on the bus between Hahashmonaim and Jerusalem, has a web site: www.cityofrefugenovel.com

Kudos to all these wonderful Anglo writers in Israel who persevere and send out their work and complete the writing process through publication.

3.  The Writing Life

I can easily convince myself that my writing career is over when I spend all my time working or playing catch with my granddaughter. Then an encouraging email arrives from an agent and suddenly characters begin to emerge from the smog of my mind, still covered in soot. The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom wrote a fascinating novel about this aspect of the writing process – the emergence of characters – called A Song of Truth and Semblance (Penguin, 1981)  Below is chapter 2, when the protagonist, a writer, is getting to meet his characters – a colonel and a doctor.  Enjoy, and do take advantage of all the wonderful writing opportunities in Israel during the coming months!

Two hours after the other writer had left, somewhat offended because of the abrupt farewell (barely civil), the writer was still sitting in the same position at his desk. There is something indescribably sad about writers alone in their studies. Sooner or later the moment arrives when they start to have doubts about what they are doing. It would perhaps be strange if it were not so. As a person gets older, reality becomes more obtrusive and at the same time less interesting because there is so much of it. Is it really necessary to add anything? Must the invented be piled on top of the existing merely because someone, in his youth, when he had little experience of what is called reality, invented some pseudo-reality and was consequently called a writer?

On the paper in front of him, the writer had written only one line: “The colonel falls in love with the doctor’s wife.”

The utter banality of this sentence made him feel sick. “So what,” he muttered. “The colonel is in love with the doctor’s wife.” Although the writer’s lofty prose poems had won him the reputation of a literary aesthete, he was usually fairly coarse in the mouth when among friends. “The epaulets screw the stethoscope’s wife. So what?” What business was it of his? No doubt, in all the five continents, there were colonels in love with doctors’ wives and doctors in love with colonels’ wives – and since colonels and doctors had existed for several hundred years, his story had obviously been written several hundred times – by life itself. On the other hand, that was true of everything. Every variant had already been invented, because it had already been lived. There were writers who thought that a story written by them would clarify something about reality itself, but what was the use? This clarity would merely form part of the reader’s reality, and was not the reader, finally, nothing other than a possible subject for a story?

Writers, thought the writer, invent a reality in which they are not obliged to live themselves, but over which they have control. He gave the still so empty sheet of paper a little push. Was that strictly true? Did he have control over those two faces he saw so slowly coming into existence? Or did they have control over him?

The doctor’s face was pale and fine-featured (what an invention! As if not millions of pale, fine-featured faces had appeared in the world and disappeared!) But pale and fine-featured it was. Cool, slightly bulging greay eyes that would not change their expression if they saw something terrible, eyebrows and lassshes of soft black hair, the mouth almost colorless and somewhat too shapely. The most masculine thing about the face was really the hair that seemed to pour out of the head and caused a growth of beard that probably had to be kept in check twice a day but remained nevertheless present like a bluish haze under the white skin. Something dark under something light, the writer thought, and on the sheet in front of him he wrote: “like water under ice, where nobody has yet skated.” He put a question mark after that and crossed it all out again. Something now occupied his mind. If it was a form of power to describe the physique of nonexistent people (to give nonexistent people a physique) based on some internal, unverifiable vision – then the height of that power must surely consist in giving names to these nonexistent people, as if they were really registered in the, in a, registry of births.

“Stefan, Stefan, Stefan,” said the colonel, prodding the doctor between the two graceful nickel curves of the stethoscope through which had passed the sound of so many death rattles. “Stefan, I swear that this is the end.”

 

 

 

 

March 2008 Newsletter

• March 2008  Newsletter from www.WriteInIsrael.com

Dedicated to creating a supportive environment  for English writers in Israel

Contents

1. Shards
2. Your Publications
3. The Writing Life

1. Shards

• Check out a wonderful new blog from my old neighborhood: “South Jerusalem: A Progressive, Skeptical Blog on Israel, Judaism, Culture, Politics, and Literature by Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman. http://southjerusalem.com/
• If you are a Jewish feminist, check out Bridges at http://bridgesjournal.org/  They are seeking submissions for a theme issue on Jewish feminists and their fathers. Deadline: July 15, 2008
• Kaleidoscope seeks submissions(short stories, essays, and articles up to 5,000 words)  for a theme issue on Disability and Childhood. Go to http://www.udsakron.org/kaleidoscope.htm for details. Deadline August 1, 2008. 
• If you don’t know the difference between active and passive voice; if you forgot your pronoun rules; or if you want to know how to submit to anthologies, check out this blog for writers http://writersreliefblog.com/
• Shifrah Devorah Will, M.A., M.F.A.,  offers creative writing classes in Jerusalem. Tel. 054-801-8483.
•  The deadline for the New Millennium Writing Contest is  June 17, 2008. Each entry costs $17. You can do so online at http://www.writingawards.com/
• The 1st International Writers Festival will open on May 11, 2008  in Jerusalem, sponsored by Mishkenot Sha’ananim. Go to their web site for details: http://www.mishkenot.org.il/
• The Deronda Review accepts poetry and very short prose (500 words). Editor Esther Cameron lives in Wisconsin and co-editor Mindy Aber Barad lives in Israel. Submit to maber4kids@yahoo.com
• The New York Jewish Week is looking for essays on Seder memories. Email: Steve@jewishweek.org
• Check out issue number 5 of The Short Review at www.theshortreview.com
• If you want to go to the best screen writing course in the world where you will learn the structure of story, sign up for Robert McKee’s Story Seminar, 19-21 April, in London. Details at http://www.mckeestory.com/
• The Jerusalem Post is accepting short stories on Israel in another 60 years. A select few will be printed in the celebratory supplement in May. Deadline April 2, 2008. email: upfront@jpost.com
• Events organized or co-sponsored by The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University:
  •   On Monday, April 28, 2008, 7:30 PM,  the Second Memorial Evening for Shaindy Rudoff (zal) will be held in the Music Auditorium, North Campus, Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. Guest speakers: Tamar Yellin, Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2007 and Gerald Stern, prize-winning American poet. RSVP to me if you would like to attend: judylabensohn@gmail.com
  • On Sunday, May 11th  at 7 PM, the 6th Annual Poetry Reading of graduates  from the Bar-Ilan Program will take place at Tmol Shilshom Bookstore/Café in Jerusalem’s downtown Nachlat Achim.
  • On June 4, 2008 at 7 PM in Jerusalem’s Yemin Moshe neighborhood, American writer and teacher Todd Hasak-Lowy will teach writers how to read a work of short Israeli fiction. Entrance fee. More details in the May Newsletter.
  • On June 19, 2008 at 7 PM in Jerusalem’s Yemin Moshe neighborhood, American poet Alicia Ostriker will lead a discussion on Jewish memoir.  Entrance fee. More details in May.
  •  On June 16th   at 7 PM, Alicia will give a poetry reading at Tmol Shilshom  in Jerusalem’s downtown  Nachlat Achim.
  • Heads Up: August 12-14, Lee Gutkind, Editor of Creative Nonfiction, will give a 3-day seminar on creative nonfiction in Jerusalem. More details in May.
• If you are a closet poet or if you have some short stories you would like to improve; if you would like to hone your fiction or poetry skills and gain confidence in your writing, now is the time to apply to The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University. You owe it to yourself to take your writing seriously. Visit www.biu.ac.il/HU/en/cw for application details. Application deadline: May 1, 2008 for semester that begins August 25, 2008

2. Your Publications

• Judith Sudilovsky, who participates in my bi-weekly Friday morning writing workshop, had her first personal essay accepted for publication in the forthcoming June issue of Naamat Magazine. Mazal tov, Judith
• Carol Ungar’s seder memory piece was accepted at The Jewish Week. Carol too is a member in the Friday morning workshop.  Congratulations!
•  Want to see your name here? Send me the details of your publications. This is good for you as a writer, because it gives you exposure, and good for all readers, because it inspires them to send out their poems, essays, and stories. Putting your writing into the world is not an easy process, so once you succeed, tell others about your success. 

3. The Writing Life

For some people, it’s no big deal to send out a poem, an essay or a story to a magazine. For others, it’s the hardest part about writing. The fear of rejection hovers over us, as well as the fear of success.

Once I had to invent a ritual just to let go of a story. I made a toy boat out of a match box, the sail a toothpick and piece of paper. The boat symbolized my story. I figured if I could let the boat set sail on the pond across from the Knesset, I’d be able to send out my story to some magazine. I put the boat in a plastic bag, put the bag in my purse, and drove to the pond. The winter day was slightly windy, excellent for sailing, thought I who knew zilch about sailing.  I took the matchbox boat out of the plastic bag, set it in the bubbling creek, and wished it well. At first it skimmed a rock or two but managed to stay afloat downstream all the way to the pond. I was ecstatic. On the pond it swayed from side to side, me standing on the shore, praying for what, I can’t remember, for it was obvious this boat had no future. You didn’t need to be a sailor or live on the Mediterranean coast to know it would sink.

Fortunately, the journey took a few minutes, rather than a few seconds, enough time for me to contemplate my anxieties about letting go of a story. I realized that if my story was accepted, it would be out in the world, out of my control. People could read into it whatever they wanted. People could say it was lousy. “Who does she think she is?” they could say. “What kind of drivel?”
 In a moment of what I can only call grace, I realized this was alright. Yes, I was losing a story, I was opening myself to criticism, but I would never lose the process. I knew I had the process of writing that story within me and I trusted that process, so I knew that I could write another story.
Thus, I was not sad when the boat sank.

Sometimes we hold on to something because we think we will be empty if we let it go. Nothing will take its place.
But if we relax and let go completely, something always takes its place.
The souls of writers and poets are like bubbling creeks.  Always, something new floats to the surface when we make room.
This past week I sent out Bethlehem Road.   This is my collection of eight stories that take place on Bethlehem Road in Jerusalem, where I lived for more than thirty years. I had to write the book when I moved away from Jerusalem in order to hold onto the neighborhood and those thirty years.
My friend asked me if the manuscript was ready for sending. “It will never be ready,” I told her. “But more important, I’m ready.”

May this Spring bring you a burst of  creative energy.
Chag Purim Sameach.

Warmly,

Judy