Mid-Week Notes

Three quick things this week:

1. Two of the five manuscripts I’d sent out into the world were rejected. I had been specifically asked to write them for this one publisher. They were both picture book biographies. I aim to make a study of them and unlock their secrets! Any you recommend?
2. I am now officially done with my PhD coursework! I’m on my second draft of my dissertation proposal about Holocaust children’s lit, but I’m also interested in the lives of displaced persons in postwar America and in Yizkor books (memorial books) written by landsmanshaftn (town-based societies). I’m working on a paper that presents a new model where narrative and historical truths co-exist based the eastern migration of refugees from my grandmother’s shtetl of Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland that several Yizkor books (e.g., Zambrow, Slonim) discuss specifically.
3. The semester has begun. I’m teaching a vast array of undergrad classes: English Comp I, English Comp II, Children of the Holocaust, Historical Methods, and US History II. My goal is to dedicate weekends to my personal writing.

Continue to be safe, wherever you are.