Roxane Gay on Literary Citizenship

Over at the AWP site, Roxane Gay offers eight questions writers should ask themselves.

One of them is: Are you a good literary citizen?

Good literary citizenship can also extend to how you comport yourself when participating in social networks. Are you relentless in promoting your own writing, sharing the same link more than two or three times? Do you send direct messages or private Facebook messages to strangers, promoting your latest project? Of course you should promote your work but take care in how you promote your work and consider sharing the good news about the writing of others, if you are so moved.

Mostly, literary citizenship is the importance of remembering that no one is alone in the writing world. Conduct yourself as such.

Read the whole essay here. It’s awesome.