Stephanie Vanderslice on Literary Citizenship
Posted: November 3, 2013 Filed under: Definitions 3 Comments
Over at the Ploughshares blog, Stephanie Vanderslice talks to Tasha Golden about teaching Literary Citizenship and other “professionalization” topics in MFA programs. Good stuff!
She says:
The two central myths are one, that literary citizenship is all about self-promotion, and two, that it’s connected deeply to the “marketplace.” For example, a lot of students (and a lot of authors who clutter my Twitter feed with tweets about their own publications and nothing else) think that literary citizenship and platform-building means nothing more than promoting their own work.
In reality, it’s about completely saturating yourself in the literary culture—and then curating and promoting the work that interests you, so that other people will find it and care about it as much as you do.
Literary Citizenship 
Reblogged this on Andrea Beltran and commented:
Fantastic blog post. From Stephanie Vanderslice: “That’s the beauty of writing: it allows us to pursue our interests in various aspects of the world, wherever those interests lead. We should share these obsessions and use them to connect to others.”
Thank you for sharing.
Reblogged this on This Frenzy and commented:
Yes yes yes. We aren’t in community to market to one another.