by Gita Passi~

On Tuesday, November 8, I attended my second live reading of the semester, from contemporary NYT best-selling novelist Stephen Graham Jones, presented by the Penn State English Department Creative Writing Program as part of the Rolling Reading Series.

Jones opened with a lighthearted anecdote recalling his first experience with emails in the early 90s, some of which were to his professor, Bill Cobb (Director of Creative Writing), who had warmly introduced his former student from the podium a few moments prior. Shortly after, Jones began the first reading of the night, a short horror story entitled “Love is a Cavity I Can’t Stop Touching,” which tells of two young lovers who bind themselves for life by scooping out and consuming pieces of each other’s thigh muscles. This piece set the tone for the rest of the night’s offerings, which were packed with incredible imagery, albeit vividly disturbing and graphic. It was impossible not to be on the edge of your seat, and I found myself squinting and flinching at certain lines as I clung to each story with the rest of the audience.

Jones balanced the heaviness of his writing with quips and jokes throughout the event, warranting chuckles and exhales of built-up tension from around the room.

After the second reading about a truck driver, Jones explained that flash fiction is his favorite genre to write in, as the pressure and compression forces the author to become innovative and fit a novel’s worth of work in less than 1000 words. The second-to-last reading, “Can You See the Indian,” was the first nonfiction and first-person reading of the night. Jones humorously described nonfiction writing as “fiction, with less lies.” The last reading took the form of a numbered list, which demonstrated its purpose by allowing Jones to disregard transitions, since, as he described, “the numbers just follow each other.”

The event ended with a Q&A session, where audience members asked questions ranging from advice on how to start stories of their own, to Jones’ thoughts on classic horror films in relation to his own writing. In response to a question about working with comic artists on works like “Earthdivers,” Jones explained the process of viewing various samples of artwork provided by his publicist to find the perfect match for his narrative–Italian artist Davide Gianfelice. The ongoing comic book series “unites four Indigenous survivors in an apocalyptic near future as they embark on a bloody, one-way mission to save the world by traveling back in time to kill Christopher Columbus and prevent the creation of America.”

More information about Stephen Graham Jones, his works, and upcoming live events can be viewed on his website.

Gita Passi is a Penn State student majoring in Digital Arts and Media Design with a Photography minor. She is currently enrolled in ENGL 50: Intro to Creative Writing, where she was introduced to Stephen Graham Jones’ work. During the fiction unit, the class read two short stories–“Moonboys” and “Bad Code“–both published in Lightspeed, an online magazine of science fiction and fantasy.