Bookslut, the literary blog founded by Jessa Crispin in 2002, will soon cease publication.

Crispin made the announcement on the blog last Wednesday: “In May, we’ll be celebrating our 14th anniversary here at Bookslut. I really have been running this site my entire adult life. Which is why it’s a little scary to say: the May issue will be our last issue. I’ve decided to cease publication of Bookslut.

“I want to thank everyone who wrote for us, copyedited for us, sent us books, took our books away (always too many books!), and everyone who read us. It means a tremendous amount to me.”

Dennis Johnson, publisher and cofounder of Melville House, said of Crispin:

[Jessa] was a real inspiration to actual outsiders, as opposed to outsiders who wanted in, a living example that there was intelligent life, genuine cool, and fun, outside the echo chamber. And so the closing of Bookslut is a real loss. But luckily she kept it up long enough to influence a generation of outsiders by now … and, I’ll bet, made a good number of insiders consider escape. That’s a serious accomplishment few of us from the pioneer days can claim.

What will Jessa do next? According to Johnson, her books came out of her blog. “[H]er first amazing book, The Dead Ladies Project [published by The University of Chicago Press], is in many ways like Bookslut writ large.... It’s the next step in her growth as an intellectual, and maybe it’s even better. And it signifies that really, she’s not going away.”

Bookslut’s penultimate issue for March/April 2016 is up, and it features interviews with authors Margo Jefferson, Tendai Huchu, Catherine Besteman, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, and Peter Tieryas. There’s also a feature on Frank Lima along with reviews of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Photo Credit: Chuck Kuan.