Carrie Jones: woman and myth and future legend

Fresh off her trip to White River Junction as the Schulz Graphic Novel Library Intern, journalist-cum-librarian Carrie Jones gave me a few minutes and then a few minutes more to discuss her time in Vermont.

You are a librarian, Carrie, but how far back does your love of books go? Growing up, did your parents read to you?
Well, my mom worked in the library at Temple University as a young woman and  I spent most of my time in utero in that library. I have no memory of my parents reading to me. I’m sure they did but it just wasn’t formative. But my mom was always reading herself and that left an impression on me. Early on I realized that as a physical space, a library is always a good place to be even if it is a bit hard to get hired to work in one right now.

Where did you go to school, did you like it?
I studied Journalism at Temple University and then got my MLIS from Pratt Institute in New York. I did not enjoy undergraduate school at all, but going back was an entirely different experience. Essentially I specialized in Archives  because I love looking through people’s stuff. On a larger scale, making archive material available  and accessible can inform history in important ways, especially for marginalized communities. In the past I’ve interned for Exit Art, the MTA archive and ACLU NY archive. In school I worked on a really fun oral history digital archive project for the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn.  I love to impose order; what could be more intoxicating?

So how did you find out about CCS and our library internship?
Actually through the Indie Spinner Rack podcast. Later, when I began writing for Inkstuds, I got a lot of sweet comics in my long lost P.O. box. The class of 2008 sent out a lot of work and the school consistently put out interesting student anthologies. So this being my first free summer from school and last free summer from life, I saw the listing Caitlin McGurk posted right as I was penning an email about visiting.

What projects have you worked on for the Schulz Library?
First I worked on student work. We cataloged and arranged all the student work, using class year as the guiding division. I stayed on an extra week to arrange and create a finding aid for the 2,000 plus zines and non-student minis that are in the collection. Working in the library with Caitlin and you was a pleasure. Given most of my past work has been in airless and freezing basement rooms, this was dream.

And what about the students of CCS or the ones that were around for the summer?
Working in an environment where you serve students is new and exciting to me. It was great to see how much the students would use the library and the different ways they would use it, whether for pleasure or research for their own art or teaching. It was interesting to work with people who are really engaged in the collection.

I’m looking forward to seeing what CCS does with its mass of archival material. I got a chance to see a ton of cool stuff–like the Denys Wortman originals, and that original Heathcliff that showed up one day)–and everybody should get to see it!

What was your favorite section of the Schulz library?
I’m sucker for anything handmade. It was thrilling to work with student comics and zines with all that silk screening, hand coloring and binding solutions. And I got reacquainted with 90s faves Dishwater Pete and Thrift Score too!

You have maintained a blog on books and comics for quite awhile, why did you start? When I moved to New York, I was very lonely and it was a great starting point in a conversation. It was a great way to discover New York in a literary way. Basically, all of the friends that I still have in New York were because of my blog that I created in 2005. Initially and still, I write about books I’m interested it, my tiny sliver of the world. Deciding to pick up a new book is just by chance, not because they are new. Sometimes the books I focus on don’t have a lot of reviews online so finding other people to connect to is easier and thrilling. Right about the time I was considering writing about mini-comics on my own blog, Robin McConnell of Inkstuds asked me to write for him.

You’ve got a presence on the internet and yet are a very private person.
Yeah, Google-stalking me is not a rewarding experience! Anonymity started as a safety measure, but I also considered the fact that no one wants the way that they look to the way people read their work. But yes, you can draw me since I already see your pen not writing but sketching.

Your blog did feature some cartoonist interviews back in 2008-2009 like Alex Kim, Chuck Forsman and Sarah Oleksyk, newer talent at the time. Will you start doing that again?
I love interviewing people, which was one of the reasons I got into journalism. Cartoonists who are less established are so open and have less patter down and are therefore more interesting to talk to. I’d love to get back to interviewing people again when I have the time–grad school did get hectic.

What was the first zine you read?
This was back in the day when you could buy zines at Borders. I remember girlymag out of Philly around 1992 and Mystery Date by Lynn Peril, which was a feminist deconstruction of home economics texts that blew my fuckin’ mind. The other one was basically… a girly mag. . I started several zines with people I no longer talk to, but the first zine I contributed to was “The Assylum,” YES like BUTT, which eventually turned into “Honey I Blew Up the White House.” Oh, the 90s.

How do you feel about clean zines, all-digital?
If you spend time doing layouts and it’s part of the work, it is just as beautiful and exciting as photocopy fun times.

I heard from an internet bird that you’re working on a zine? What’s it about?
It’s about sibling grief actually. It will collect some blog writing I’ve done before, and new things that I’ve been working on recently. My brother died suddenly in 2003. I’ve gotten to the point in my grief process where I want to make something for other people know they’re not alone. I did some work on it in White River Junction.  Getting back into that headspace again was hard and my time in Vermont was emotionally intense because if it. I did a lot of  boozin’ and cryin’ and thinkin’.

Those are often essential to the whole comics and zine making process. I cannot wait to read it. So zine-making is in the future and what else?
New York employment, of course. And a lot of writing. Maybe getting a new P.O. box, I’m already getting mini-comics hungry again.

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Many thanks to Carrie Jones for taking the time for this interview. You can read plenty of Jones’ writing at her blog and the Inkstuds blog as well.

–Jen Vaughn