An Old-Time Fiction Reading

Because of the recent success of his short story, "Raphael," Stephen Graham Jones, associate professor of English, held an old-fashioned fiction reading in the English auditorium in March.

According to the flyer advertising the event, Jones promised to read aloud at least one story including zombies and, time and audience permitting, also one with love. Jones lived up to his guarantee by reading aloud five of his short stories and excepts from both "Raphael" and his newest novel, "Demon Theory." And true to his word, at least one story included love in some form and the last one did feature zombies.

The reading started with an introduction by Fernando Benavidez.

"He doesn't really seem to be worried about being celebrated or well-known, even though he is," Benavidez said about Jones during his introduction. "Instead he is one of the most down-to-earth, personal people you could ever meet. And the smartest, too."

As with most of Jones' writing, the stories heard during the reading all involved unusual circumstances or the irony of everyday occurances transformed into the extraordinary. Yet even in these fantasy stories written in the horror genre, readers can find laugher in, as Jones says, "all the right places."

“Raphael,” Jones’ recently publicized short story, is about the perceived reality of scary stories, and what would happen if they became real. It was first published in “Cemetery Dance,” an award-winning, bimonthly magazine of horror, dark mystery and suspense. Click here for more information about "Raphael."

Jones wrote "Raphael" in no more than two hours, he said during the reading.

"Anything that takes me more than two days, that's pretty much a guarantee that it's going to be trash," Jones said. "When they come out natural, you're lucky."

Jones, a graduate of Texas Tech, is the award-winning author of four full-length novels and a short story collection. His short story collection was a finalist for the Violet Crown Award, sponsored by the Writers League of Texas, and it earned the Texas Institute of Letters’ 2005 Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction. Past awards include the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

For more information, go to the Stephen Graham Jones Web site.

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