The final Sunday of the festival offered a unique opportunity for writers to hear tips from Jessa Crispin (founder of Bookslut.com), Eli Horowitz (McSweeneys) and Heidi Julavits (The Believer) on how to submit work to their respective websites and publications. Though this was a short, casual and unpublicised event (except via the Festival’s e-newsletter a few days beforehand) it was an eye-opener for how Australian writers can get noticed in the US.
BookSlut.com
Jessa Crispin, started BookSlut.com, a monthly online literary magazine about seven years ago. The philosophy behind it was simple: to ‘create a community’ (though she hates the word) of people who took books seriously, not themselves. Since, it’s grown into what she calls an ‘odd little free for all’ with around 40 regular writers of features and columns and a host of one-off, occasional and regular reviewers. While she once begged for books to review Bookslut.com is now swamped by publishers submitting books from all over the world trying to get noticed by the 250,000 or so unique readers to the site every month.
