Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfoot Native American author of experimental fiction, horror fiction, crime fiction, and science fiction. 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. 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.

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

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. He is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana.

Writing career

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.

In 2002, Jones won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction. 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''. He won the Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction for ''Mapping the Interior'' in 2017. ''The Only Good Indians'', a horror novel, was published on July 14, 2020 through Saga Press and Titan Books. It won the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction in 2020''.''

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.

Jones won two 2020 Bram Stoker Awards for ''Night of the Mannequins'' and ''The Only Good Indians''. ''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, 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."

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.' His eighth novel, ''Ledfeather'', which Jones himself has acknowledged as being the most widely taught of his books, is used as Gaudet's primary example. ''Mongrels'' too has been included as an example since its publication in 2016.

Selected works

Books

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Under the pseudonym P. T. Jones

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Short stories

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Men, Women, and Chainsaws
" Tor.com. 2022. ISBN 9781250850874.

Comics

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References

Further reading

* Billy J. Stratton, ''The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion'' (U of New Mexico P, 2016)
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External links

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"The Night Cyclist" short story by Stephen Graham Jones"Chapter Six" short story by Stephen Graham Jones

Reviews by Stephen Graham Jones
on IMDb
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Stephen Graham Jones at the University of Colorado website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Stephen Graham
1972 births
Living people
21st-century American novelists
American horror writers
American male novelists
American mystery writers
American science fiction writers
Blackfoot people
Florida State University alumni
Native American novelists
Texas Tech University faculty
American male short story writers
21st-century American short story writers
21st-century American male writers
Novelists from Texas
Weird fiction writers