Book Club Sets

Book Club Author Suggestion: Stephen Graham Jones

"Stories are the way we remember who we are, the way we tell ourselves that we matter." - Stephen Graham Jones

By Regan Harper: Published on
Book Club Sets
Black and white headshot photo of Stephen Graham Jones, wearing hi hair in a ponytail, a dark suit jacket and with button up shirt. His is posed in front of a white cement block wall.
Stephen Graham Jones, 2020 (Literary Hub)

Brief Bio:

Stephen Graham Jones is a prolific American author known for his contributions to the genres of horror, speculative fiction, and literary fiction. He was born on January 22, 1972, and is a member of the Blackfeet Nation. Jones grew up in West Texas and has drawn on his Native American heritage and personal experiences to inform his writing.

Jones earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy from Texas Tech University. He went on to receive a Master of Arts from the University of North Texas and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University. His academic background is reflected in the depth and complexity of his narratives.

Stephen Graham Jones’s writing often explores themes such as identity, cultural heritage, and the supernatural. His works are known for their unique blend of horror and literary fiction, often incorporating elements of Native American folklore and contemporary issues. Jones’s storytelling is characterized by its dark humor, innovative structure, and deep psychological insights and his work stands out for its ability to merge horror with profound explorations of identity and culture, making him a significant figure in contemporary American literature.

In addition to his writing, Stephen Graham Jones is also a respected academic. He has taught at various institutions, including Texas Tech University and the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is a professor of English. His teaching and scholarly work often focus on creative writing and contemporary fiction. He continues to write prolifically, contributing to both genre and literary fiction with his distinctive voice and innovative storytelling.

Available Works in the Colorado Book Club Resource

The Book Club Resource has 8+ copies of each title available for 8 weeks at a time to reading groups across the state. The descriptions below were taken from Amazon.com.

Bleed Into Me (2005) | Discussion Questions

Bleed Into Me cover art: White lettering with grey shadow on a white background, with red blood spots.We stare at each other because we don’t know which tribe, and then nod at the last possible instant. Standard procedure. You pick it up the first time a white friend leads you across a room just to stand you up by another Indian, arrange you like furniture, like you should have something to say to each other. As one character after another tells it in these stories, much that happens to them does so because “I’m an Indian.” And, as Stephen Graham Jones tells it in one remarkable story after another, the life of an Indian in modern America is as rich in irony as it is in tradition. A noted Blackfeet writer, Jones offers a nuanced and often biting look at the lives of Native peoples from the inside. A young Indian mans journey to discover America results in an unsettling understanding of relations between whites and Natives in the twenty-first century, a relationship still fueled by mistrust, stereotypes, and almost casual violence. A character waterproofs his boots with transmission fluid; another steals into Glacier National Park to hunt. One man uses watermelon to draw flies off poached deer; another, in a modern twist on the captivity narrative, kidnaps a white girl in a pickup truck; and a son bleeds into the father carrying him home. Rife with arresting and poignant images, fleeting and daring in presentation, weighty and provocative in their messages, these stories demonstrate the power of one of the most compelling writers in Native North America today.

The Only Good Indians (2020) | Discussion Questions

The Only Good Indians cover art: black cover with the eye and horns of a stag's head in profile. From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Earthdivers Vol 1 (2022) | Discussion Questions

Earth Divers Volume 1 cover art. The aminated face of a man with a partially shaved head, on a blue sky background, and pirate shops on the water, with the lower portion of his face a skeleton's jaw in a red and white sea.Volume 1: Kill Columbus: The year is 2112, and it’s the apocalypse exactly as expected: rivers receding, oceans rising, civilization crumbling. Humanity has given up hope, except for a group of Indigenous outcasts who have discovered a time travel portal in a cave in the desert and figured out where everything took a turn for the worst: America.

Convinced that the only way to save the world is to rewrite its past, they send one of their own—a reluctant linguist named Tad—on a bloody, one-way mission to 1492 to kill Christopher Columbus before he reaches the so-called New World. But there are steep costs to disrupting the timeline, and taking down an icon isn’t an easy task for an academic with no tactical training and only a wavering moral compass to guide him. As the horror of the task ahead unfolds and Tad’s commitment is tested, his actions could trigger a devastating new fate for his friends and the future. Collects Earthdivers issues #1-6), the beginning of an unforgettable ongoing sci-fi slasher spanning centuries of America’s Colonial past to explore the staggering forces of history and the individual choices we make to survive it.

A Few Notable Facts:

  • Jones lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his family.
  • He was born in Midland, Texas.
  • As a youth, he wanted to be a farmer.
  • Jones teaches at the University of Colorado as the Ineva Reilly Baldwin Endowed Chair, and has been on faculty since 2008.
  • Jones is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana.
  • Jones has written more than thirty books since 2000.
  • After graduating with his Ph. D. in 1998, Jones worked in a warehouse in Texas until a back injury relegated him to a desk job.
  • Jones worked at the Texas Tech Library until going on to teach at the University.
  • Jones contributed an X-Men story to Marvel Comics’ Marvel Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 anthology.
  • Jones’ novels can be described as Rez Gothic (genre characterized as using fantasy, science fiction and horror to shed light on racial inequities).

Selected Quotations:

  • “Horror is about the unknown, about the shadows just around the corner. It’s about fear of the future, fear of the past, fear of oneself.”
  • “You write to get to the end of a sentence, then you write to get to the end of a paragraph, and then you write to get to the end of a page. And pretty soon, you’ve got a whole book.”
  • “Being Native means you carry your history with you, and sometimes that history is very heavy.”
  • “Fiction is a way to process reality. It’s a way to take the raw, sharp pieces of life and turn them into something that makes sense, something that tells a story.”
  • “They took everything from him, all those years ago, but the one thing they couldn’t take, he understands now, is this moment.”
  • “Every story is a ghost story, even if it’s not.”
  • “Horror, at its best, isn’t about the monster outside your window; it’s about the monster inside your head.”
  • “I see so, so many novels written by people who are obviously short story writers. What they end up doing, it’s going the full distance, covering three hundred pages or so, but they do it by just writing five or six long stories, and weaving them together, making them interdependent.”
  • “If you keep having to dip into the story’s past to explain the present, then there’s a good chance your real story’s in the past, and you’re just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.”
  • “The slasher film is such a neat, self-contained genre.”
  • “If the main character’s not in jeopardy – physical, psychological, emotional, whatever – then you don’t have any tension, and you don’t have a story.”
  • “Horror, of all the genres, is the only one that can provoke an involuntary visceral reaction.”

Awards and Recognition

  • 2002: “The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong” Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction (Winner); National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction (Winner); 
  • 2006: “Bleed Into Me” Jesse Jones Award for Fictions from the Texas Institute of Letters
  • 2007: “Raphael” International Horror Guild Award for Short Fiction (Nominee)
  • 2009: “The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti” Shirley Jackson Award for Novella (Nominee)
  • 2010: “Lonegan’s Luck” Shirley Jackson Award for Novelette (Nominee)
  • 2011: “The Ones That Got Away” Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection (Finalist); Shirley Jackson Award for Collection (Nominee)
  • 2015: “After the People Lights Have Gone Off” Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection (Nominee); Shirley Jackson Award for Collection (Nominee)
  • 2016: “Mongrels” Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel (Finalist)
  • 2017: “Mapping the Interior” Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction (Winner); “Mongrels” Locus Award for Best Horror Novel (9th place); Shirley Jackson Award for Novel (Nominee); “The Night Cyclist” Shirley Jackson Award for Novelette (Nominee)
  • 2018: “Mapping the Interior” Shirley Jackson Award for Novel (Nominee); World Fantasy Award—Novella (Nominee)
  • 2020: “Night of the Mannequins” Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction (Winner); Shirley Jackson Award for Novella (Winner); “The Only Good Indians” Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel (Winner); Shirley Jackson Award for Novel (Winner)
  • 2021: “My Heart is a Chainsaw” Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel (Winner); “Night of the Mannequins” Shirley Jackson Award, Novella (Winner); “The Only Good Indians” British Fantasy Award for Horror Novel (Nominee) Dragon Award for Horror Novel (Nominee); Ignyte Award for Adult Novel (Nominee); World Fantasy Award—Novel (Finalist); Locus Award for Best Horror Novel (2nd place); “Wait for Night” Locus Award for Best Short Story (10th place)
  • 2022: “My Heart Is a Chainsaw” British Fantasy Award for Horror Novel (Nominee); Dragon Award for Horror Novel (Nominee); Locus Award for Best Horror Novel (Winner); Shirley Jackson Award for Novel (Winner)

Sources

Book club sets are circulated to participating libraries via the CLiC courier. Read all about the program on the Book Club Resource landing page. If you are interested in receiving book club sets but are not already a member library, use the online form to get signed up.

Since the BCR has always relied on book donations, we are deeply grateful to all of the institutions and individuals that have donated sets and helped make the collection stronger. Please contact bookclub@coloradovirtuallibrary.org for questions or to discuss donations.

Regan Harper
Latest posts by Regan Harper (see all)