Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfoot Native American author of experimental fiction, horror fiction,[1] crime fiction, and science fiction.[2][3] Although his recent work is often classified as horror, he is celebrated for applying more "literary" stylings to a variety of speculative genres, as well as his prolificness, having published 22 books under the age of 50.[4] 31.5 linear feet of Jones' works are held in the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World, part of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University.[5]

Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones, late 2019
Born	1972 (age 49–50) Midland, Texas
Occupation	Writer, Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at University of Colorado Boulder
Language	English
Nationality	Blackfoot Tribe, American
Alma mater	Texas Tech University University of North Texas Florida State University
Genre	Horror fiction

He is currently the Ivena Baldwin professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.[6]

Background

Stephen Graham Jones was born in Midland, Texas, in 1972. Jones received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and Philosophy from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. in 1994. He then went on to earn his Master of Arts Degree in English from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, in 1996. He completed his Ph.D. in 1998 from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.[7] He is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana.[8]

Writing career

This section needs expansion with: more details. You can help by adding to it. (November 2021)

While he was attending Florida State University, Jones's dissertation director introduced him to Houghton-Mifflin editor Jane Silver at the Writers' Harvest conference. Jones pitched her a novel which he had not yet written, and Silver liked the idea. Jones then wrote the book, The Fast Red Road, as his dissertation. It was published as his debut novel in 2000.[9]

In 2002, Jones won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction.[10] In 2006, he won the Jesse Jones Award for Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters for his 2005 short story collection Bleed Into Me.[11] He won the Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction for Mapping the Interior in 2017.[12] The Only Good Indians, a horror novel, was published on July 14, 2020 through Saga Press and Titan Books.[13] It won the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction in 2020.[14]

Jones contributed an X-Men story to Marvel Comics' Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 anthology, release in November of 2020. Joining him was artist David Cutler.[15]

Jones won two 2020 Bram Stoker Awards for Night of the Mannequins and The Only Good Indians.[16] My Heart is a Chainsaw won the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for Novel.

Themes and style

Jones has acknowledged a debt to Native American Renaissance writers, especially Gerald Vizenor,[17] who wrote the praise for Jones's debut The Fast Red Road. Scholar Cathy Covell Waegner describes his work as containing elements of "dark playfulness, narrative inventiveness, and genre mixture."[17]

Other scholars such as Joseph Gaudet have cited his writing as "post-ironic" or representative of David Foster Wallace's "New Sincerity," a literary approach "emerging in response to the cynicism, detachment, and alienation that many saw as defining the postmodern canon," seeking instead "to more patently embrace morality, sincerity, and an 'ethos of belief.'[18] His eighth novel, Ledfeather, which Jones himself has acknowledged as being the most widely taught of his books,[19] is used as Gaudet's primary example. Mongrels too has been included as an example since its publication in 2016.

Selected works

Books

Under the pseudonym P. T. Jones

• P.T. Jones; Paul Tremblay (2014). Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly. ChiTeen, ChiZine Publications. ISBN 9781771481731.

Short stories

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (September 2021)

• "Captain's Lament". Clarkesworld. No. 17. February 2008.
• "How Billy Hanson Destroyed the Planet Earth, and Everyone on It". Juked. April 1, 2009.
• Jones, Stephen Graham (2012). "Little Lambs". In VanderMeer, Jeff; VanderMeer, Ann (eds.). The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (Reprint ed.). Tor Books. ISBN 978-0765333605.
• Sterling City. Nightscape. 2013. ISBN 9781938644160.
• The Elvis Room. This is Horror. 2014. ISBN 9780957548152.
• "Brushdogs". Nightmare Magazine. No. 58. 2014.
• "Men, Women, and Chainsaws." Tor.com. 2022. ISBN 9781250850874.

Comics

• Earthdivers #1– (October 2022–present), IDW Publishing[21]

References

Further reading

• Billy J. Stratton, The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion (U of New Mexico P, 2016)
• Chaplinsky, Joshua (January 10, 2011). "Stephen Graham Jones". The Cult. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
• Hart, Rob (November 28, 2007). "Stephen Graham Jones". The Cult. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
• Slushpile (July 1, 2005). "Interview: Stephen Graham Jones, Author". Slushpile.net. Retrieved February 28, 2015.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stephen Graham Jones.

• Official website
• "Exodus" short story by Stephen Graham Jones
• "The Night Cyclist" short story by Stephen Graham Jones
• "Chapter Six" short story by Stephen Graham Jones
• Reviews by Stephen Graham Jones on IMDb
• Stephen Graham Jones at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database