Your literary agent represents you and your work, indeed champions you and your work, to the rest of the publishing industry and beyond.

If you felt that your literary agency neither respected you nor shared your values, it would stand to reason that they would not be the best representatives of your work.

They can go on representing the work of others, and indeed the work of others is entirely unaffected. No-one has been censored because someone chose to be represented by a different agency.

This sounds incredibly basic, doesn’t it. Like I’m pointing out something so incredibly obvious that it’s almost patronising to explain it.

And yet here we are, firmly entrenched in a bad faith literary and intellectual culture in which fundamentally basic points like these need to be made in order to ensure things aren’t manipulated to fit a ridiculous moral panic about thought crime or something.

And for the record, leaving ones literary agency is not some sort of short cut to publicity. This is because (a) it happens all the time and (b) it’s far more of a risk for the writer than for the agency.

I have absolute solidarity with writers seeking out literary agencies and publishers where they feel they, and perhaps even more importantly their *work*, are fundamentally understood, valued, and nurtured. That’s what these institutions are for: to nurture and support writers.

Again I can’t actually believe this needs to be said.