Stephen Graham Jones

answers the Usual Questions

Author Stephen Graham Jones is also Professor of English, University of Colorado at Boulder.

From his bio on his web site he appears to have an obsession with Elvis and long sentences...

Has your interaction with fans, for example, at conventions, affected your work?

I always think not, but then I'll be writing something, and I'll remember that person in the audience or at the signing who wanted clarification on this or that, and I'll make myself be certain that this would work for them. Or else I'll decapitate them in effigy.

Is there any particular incident (a letter, a meeting, a comment that stands out?

A while back I got a letter from someone about the title story for my collection Bleed Into Me. That person was saying how he'd also lost a brother -- that's in that story -- and how this helped him in a way he couldn't really figure out. It meant a lot. It still does.

Do you have a favourite author or book (or writer or film or series) that has influenced you or that you return to?

Most influential book for me's probably either It or The Last Picture Show or Love Medicine. The movie that always infects whatever I'm doing, that's Scream. I don't know if 'influence' is exactly what I'd claim, though. More like 'challenged by.' 'Intimidated.'

Who is the person you would most like to be trapped in a lift with? or a spaceship?

In an elevator? John McClane. Though he'd surely punch me as well as save me. Spaceship? Jerry Reed, maybe. I bet that dude had some cool stories to just sit around and spin. And there'd be a lot of time to kill on a spaceship.

Who is the person you would most DISlike to be trapped in a lift with? Or a spaceship?

Lawrence Talbot, for both? Certain problems would present themselves. It'd be fascinating to watch, but a struggle to live through.

What would you pack for space? (Is there a food, beverage, book, teddy bear, etc that you couldn't do without?)

Graham crackers. Sometimes a graham is the most perfect thing in the world. Or whatever world you're touching down on. I also have these two hammers that mean a lot. I don't think I'd want to leave Earth without them. And I'm sure I'd be trying to sneak blades past space-TSA.

What is the most important thing you would like to get/achieve from your work?

For me not to completely lose myself in it, such that I can't find my way back. And for it to help people in some way, even if it's just making the commercial breaks of Three's Company more entertaining.

What is the special satisfaction of your work?

To the reader? Hopefully that it's honest, that it's sincere. I try to never do it otherwise.

submitted by Stephen Graham Jones

31 July 2014

For other answers to The Usual Questions Click here

Just the facts:
Born: Midland, Texas, 1972.
Resides: Boulder, Colorado, 2014.
Bibliography/Awards:
16 novels as of 2014. Five story collections. One novella, two chapbooks. More than two-hundred stories. Have won the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Fiction, the Independent Publishers Multicultural Award, and an NEA Fellowship in Fiction.

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