We at Writer’s Relief are so happy to announce that B.J. Yudelson is this week’s Featured Client. B.J. came to us in the summer of 2009, and since then, we’ve enjoyed getting to know her (and helping her with her work!). Learn more about B.J. here!

B.J.’s Take On Writer’s Relief: As a writer of nonprofit communications, I was accustomed to having my words read. Once I became serious about personal writing, I occasionally shipped something out to one of the few journals I knew, but mostly my work accumulated in my computer. Each rejection made it harder to try again.

And then I learned about Writer’s Relief.

After a year and a half of bi-monthly submissions and scores of rejection letters, which I have learned not to take personally, I finally received an acceptance for one of my essays. Since then, two more works have been accepted. In addition, two short pieces have appeared in an anthology that I learned about from the Writer’s Relief website. Writer’s Relief has given me a systematic way to submit to a vast array of journals. More importantly, it has given me the pleasure of seeing my words reach an audience beyond my family and writing group. I concentrate on writing and rely on Writer’s Relief for the rest. And oh, what a relief it is!

ABOUT B.J.: B.J. Yudelson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Colere, Eclectica, The Griffin, Democrat & Chronicle, Jewish Action, The Jewish Georgian, Tiny Lights, and in the anthologies I Didn’t Get Old Being Stupid: Wisdom from Elders and Flashlight Memories. She has twice been a finalist in Tiny Light’s annual contest. Her entry about her heirloom Sabbath lamp won second place in the National Jewish Outreach Program’s “Judaica Across America” contest.

During her professional career as communications director for a Rochester, New York, nonprofit agency and then as a freelance fund-raising/public relations writer, she wrote hundreds of newsletters, annual reports, grant proposals, solicitation letters, thank-you letters, op-ed pieces, press releases, speeches, and even doggerel honoring volunteers and donors. Since retirement, she has found her own voice in creative nonfiction. Classes at Writers & Books are the cornerstone of her week. She is currently working on a memoir of her journey from her southern, classical Reform Jewish background to her current Orthodox Jewish life.

When not writing, she visits nine grandchildren on two coasts, travels with her husband, tries to transmit her love of words and stories to the beginning readers she tutors in a city school, and has recently returned to the study of Hebrew. She and her husband, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month, just returned from a weeklong whitewater canoe trip. Her favorite place to be is in her solo canoe, searching for loons on an Adirondack lake.