The Center for Literary Arts is pleased to present Stephen Graham Jones reading from his novel, Off the Reservation. This event takes place on Thursday, April 15, 2027 at Hammer Theatre at 7 PM.
Five years have passed since the massacre on the Blackfeet reservation in Stephen Graham Jones’s breakout bestseller The Only Good Indians. Nathan Yellow Tail, one of the survivors of the revenge murders, finds himself in the hospital after a terrible accident that should’ve killed him and that nearly killed his best friend, Sebby, who is hanging on to life in a room a few doors down.
Nate’s life is out of balance, so when he is given the chance to reset his life, and maybe save Sebby in the process, Nate steps up, again. This time it’s into a camper van that is almost as run down as his broken body, filled with three older Blackfeet, to find the bones of the lone Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School—where many Indigenous children were abused—and repatriate this boy home. The problem is, when they get the bones, something terrible has escaped with them.
By turns terrifying and deeply moving, Off the Reservation is a haunting American Indian novel of survival, reckoning, and redemption, shining light on the dark corners of this country’s history while also showing the desperate choices people make when they’re put up against a wall.
Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of nearly thirty novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Stephen’s been an NEA recipient, has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award, ALA’s RUSA Award and Alex Award, the 2023 American Indian Festival of Words Writers Award, the Locus Award, four Bram Stoker Awards, three Shirley Jackson Awards, six This is Horror Awards, and he’s been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, and the Eisner Award. He’s also made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels, and is the guy who wrote Mongrels, The Only Good Indians, My Heart is a Chainsaw, Earthdivers, and I Was a Teenage Slasher. His most recent books are True Believers and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and Off the Reservation.
This event is made possible thanks to the support of the Lewandowski Family Foundation, and the College of Humanities and the Arts' Artist Excellence Programming Grant.