Jessa Crispin: The Accidental Tastemaker
Jessa Crispin is the founder and editor of Bookslut, a literary blog founded in 2002, which, as she put it “makes me feel so very, very old.” Fringe’s Alexandra Sheckler caught up with Crispin on email to dish about the blog, review-worthy books, and the best reads of 2009.
What was the inspiration for starting Bookslut?
Boredom. I was working a day job that did not require a full day to finish everything. I spent a lot of time browsing around, looking for literary news or books I hadn’t heard of. I would often email these links to my sisters, and then I realized I should maybe put them up on a blog instead of flooding their inbox. Then people other than my sisters started reading the blog, and I decided that I should give them something better to read. With the help of Michael Schaub, I started to design the magazine portion of Bookslut—the reviews, interviews, features, and columns.
I’ve read that you had no experience in the publishing world. What made you decide to jump in headfirst?
Honestly, I didn’t realize that was what I was doing, jumping into the publishing world. I didn’t expect anyone to read the blog, or really even the magazine. Even then I thought the audience would be, I don’t know, 22-year-olds in their cubicles. I was very naive—living in Texas, [a] college dropout, working at a nonprofit, had never written anything seriously in my life—and if I had set out trying to make a splash in the publishing world, I’m sure it would have been a disaster. So no guidance, but a couple years into it I was lucky to meet kindred souls.
What types of books do you think are the best for featuring on the site? In other words, what books make the cut and what books don’t?
There are some books that just will not get on the site: chick lit, self-help, picture books of cats that look drunk, celebrity memoirs. I think that I sort of set the pace back when I was doing pretty much everything, and so my taste forms the vibe: I tend to like small press books, a lot of foreign fiction, reissues, nonfiction. The site tends to attract contributors who are into similar books. Then they have a lot of freedom to review what they like. Michael and I will do a weeding of the books, and then they’ll choose what they want to review from the selected list. I know a lot of people assign books—we really only do that in a very nice way. “Hey, there’s this book, we think you’ll like it, want us to send it to you, see what you think?”
