The Rock Island Public Library presents “Horror with Stephen Graham Jones" -- October 4.
Wednesday, October 4, 7 p.m.
Presented by the Rock Island Public Library
Participating in a special virtual program co-presented by the Rock Island Public Library and Illinois Libraries Present, a bestselling writer will tackle a seasonally appropriate genre in the October 4 online event Horror with Stephen Graham Jones, a conversation with the Blackfoot Native American fiction author whose most widely known works include the horror novels The Only Good Indians, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and Night of the Mannequins.
An enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, Jones received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Philosophy from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas in 1994. After graduating, he went on to earn his Master of Arts degree in English from Denton's University of North Texas in 1996, and completed his Ph.D. in 1998 from Tallahassee's Florida State University. It was there that , Jones' dissertation director introduced him to Houghton-Mifflin editor Jane Silver at the Writers' Harvest conference, and after successfully pitching her an idea for a novel he had not yet written, Jones wrote the book The Fast Red Road as his dissertation. It was subsequently published as his debut novel in 2000, and after Jones won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction in 2002, he followed his debut with All the Beautiful Sinners in 2003.
Three years later, the author won the Jesse Jones Award for Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters for his 2005 short story collection Bleed Into Me, and went on to receive the Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction for Mapping the Interior in 2017. The Only Good Indians, one of Jones' most famed horror novels, was published on in 2020 through Saga Press and Titan Books, and later that year, the work won the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction. Additionally, Jones won two 2020 Bram Stoker Awards for Night of the Mannequins and The Only Good Indians and a 2021 Bram Stoker Award for My Heart Is a Chainsaw, with the author, alongside artist David Cutler, also contributing an X-Men story to Marvel Comics' Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 anthology.
During his virtual October 4 event, Jones – currently the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder – will talk scary stories, horror, and more with Illinois librarian and Readers' Advisor Becky Spratford. She trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through local public libraries, and runs the critically acclaimed blog RA for All. A devout horror fan, Spratford writes a horror review column for Library Journal, is the author of The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, and is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association.
This event is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present, a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).
Horror with Stephen Graham Jones will be presented virtually on October 4, participation in the 7 p.m. program is free, and more information is available by calling (309)732-7323 and visiting RockIslandLibrary.org.
