Stephen Graham Jones

They say you should never meet your heroes. But speaking with Stephen Graham Jones is a lot like speaking with your local theater nerd about the history of Broadway, except with a lot more goosebumps and nightmares.

- BY MORIAH RICHARD

The award-winning author and Professor of Distinction shares how he constructed the nested narrative in his latest novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.

Known for his horror writing, Jones has won or been nominated for over 20 awards, including the Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, British Fantasy Awards, and Locus Awards. He has published more than 30 books and hundreds of short stories, in genres ranging from horror to science fiction to absurdist. You can find his work in well-known publications like Clarkesworld and Nightmare Magazine. On top of his writing career, Jones is also the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English and a Professor of Distinction at the University of Colorado Boulder. But while some writers might let those accolades feed their egos, Jones is just like the rest of us plagued with pre-publication anxiety.

"I'm still in that stage where it could be a total flop and a failure and nobody's going like it, you know?" he says, laughing, as we sit down to discuss his upcoming release, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. "Like, you and three other people have read it, so I'm scared. But you're supposed to be scared, I think, too."

I assure you; he has nothing to be scared about. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a historical horror novel about a professor, Etsy, who, in the midst of a career crisis in 2012, is transcribing her great-great grandfather's diary. Through entries from 1912, we learn that Arthur Beaucarne, a pastor, heard several confessionals by a Blackfeet man named Good Stab. These transcribed confessionals leave blood in their wake.

We begin our conversation by discussing the technicality behind this latest release.

I would consider The Buffalo Hunter Hunter to be a story within a story within a story, but all three of those stories are told through first-person narration. Was it difficult to keep all of those voices distinct?