Revisiting ghost story Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
This April sees a new edition of one of the horror writer most beloved backlist releases.
“We all root for the underdog, don’t we? And, that’s built right into horror.”
In this article:
New York Times bestselling horror luminary Stephen Graham Jones is renowned for his razor-sharp stories that center indigenous perspectives, spill buckets of blood, and hold readers taut from first to final page. In April, the author pulls readers on a spine-tingling journey through a young boy’s haunted home with a new edition of Mapping the Interior.
Jones burst into the spotlight with 2020’s The Only Good Indians and continued to soar with the Indian Lake Trilogy, I Was a Teenage Slasher, and 2025’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. His fiction was also celebrated on SGJ Day when six out-of-print titles were reissued in new editions.
Below, find out more about Mapping The Interior. You can also learn more about the author, check out some questions and answers with him, and even find several links to more places you can visit Jones online.
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More about the book
More about Mapping The Interior
Winner of the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction!
Times have been tough for twelve-year-old Junior, his mom, and especially for his younger brother Dino. When his dad makes a surprise visit late one night, Junior is desperate to make him part of their family again. The only problem is Dad drowned eight years ago. And bringing back the dead always comes at a cost…
Mapping the Interior
Endorsements
“Part S.E. Hinton and part Shirley Jackson. It’s about being young and broke, and that moment when you first wonder who your parents really are. The answers are out there, but they will leave you haunted forever.”—Richard Kadrey, author of the Sandman Slim series and co-author of The Dead Take the A Train
“Jones’s neat little horror novella balances an energetic narrative with larger explorations of the inescapable burdens of family ties...Wonderfully refreshing and not to be missed.”—Publishers Weekly
“A darkly meditative tale of innocence, family, and ghosts that only Stephen Graham Jones could tell.”—New York Journal of Books
More about Stephen Graham Jones
“I really like horror in all it’s forms. I haven’t found a genre that I can’t find some good in.” (Source: Broken Antler)
Photo: Alina Art
Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians. A Blackfeet Native American author noticed for his horror, science fiction, and literary fiction, his books also include Zombie Bake-Off, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Night of the Mannequins, and the collection Three Miles Past.
He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Locus Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association.
He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Q&A
Q&A with Stephen Graham Jones
What is Mapping The Interior about? It’s been said that this is a horror novel, but what kind of horror do you think it is? Is it freaky, psychological horror, Lovecraftian…?
It’s about sons and fathers, mothers and brothers. It’s about walking up a dirt road with your brother after the bus has dropped you off and having all of your future opening up before you. It’s about knowing every inch of your house, or thinking you do.
I think I’d call it “Growing Up Horror.” Not like, “So, you grew up Romance? Not me, I grew up horror.” Mapping The Interior is about the horrors involved with growing up. It’s not all sunshine and daisies. There’s blood and terror and doubt, too. Kind of an endless cycle of it, really.
(Source: Paul Semel)
As a college professor, how often does your teaching work inspire your fiction work?
Back when I was teaching my zombie course pretty regular, I put out Zombie Bake-Off. And I did Growing Up Dead in Texas as a result of a grad fiction workshop where we were talking about the shadings between fiction and non-fiction. And my American Thriller course definitely informed All the Beautiful Sinners and Seven Spanish Angels. The Last Final Girl pairs right up, year-wise, with a slasher course I taught. So, it happens a lot, I guess.
But, usually? It’s not that either really comes first. What happens is that I get to really thinking about werewolves, and my life is all werewolves here, werewolves there, werewolves everywhere. So of course I teach a course on them. And of course I write a novel about them. They’re both just ways I think about werewolves.
I don’t guess I know where Flushboy comes from, though—oh, wait, I kind of do. I was teaching a Young Adult graduate seminar. Well, I taught it right after writing Flushboy. But I taught it because I couldn’t stop thinking about the genre, the mode. And I’m still always thinking about it. There’s a magic there, and I want to touch it.
(Source: Nightmare Magazine)
Your prickly, slasher-obsessed heroine Jade Daniels became an instant hit after her first appearance in My Heart is a Chainsaw. Her return in Don’t Fear the Reaper was highly anticipated, as demonstrated by the multitude of online selfies of fans sporting “Jade Daniels is my Final Girl” t-shirts. Why do you think Jade resonates so much with readers?
We all root for the underdog, don’t we? I think that might be part of it. And, that’s built right into horror. You always design your antagonist as bigger and badder than the hero, such that when and if they best that baddie, then it’s an upset—that underdog shouldn’t win. Neither should Jade. But heart and stubbornness count for a lot. Jade’s got heaps of both.
(Source: Grimdark)
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Horror luminary Stephen Graham Jones pulls readers on a spine-tingling journey through a young boy’s haunted home with a new edition of Mapping the Interior. Find out more about the book and learn more about the author.