Last Saturday I attended the Inaugural Laguna Beach Literary Festival, and I’m so glad I did, because the whole experience strengthened my resolve to be a better Literary Citizen. Simply put, that’s a person who reads. Like me. Like you, as you are reading this. Of course I also happen to be a person who writes, but that’s a side note to my conviction to read widely, to buy books, to pop into my local bookstore and ask for their favorites, basically to consider the rich nuances of humanity through novels and non-fiction alike. Reading to view our present dilemmas against the atrocities of the past. To acknowledge flaws in beliefs that were once so solid. Reading to better understand those who I can’t and reading to find solidarity. Reading generates questions like why is it that authoritarian regimes burn books? Why is educational funding cut before anything else? Why is everyone ingesting their information and imagination via visuals like TikTok and YouTube? Whose interest is being served by this shift away from print? Why is maintaining literary citizenship a threat to governments who don’t respect your ideas, your past, your rights, your very existence? By reading you know exactly why.

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