BEST AUTHOR BEST : STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

 

The horror writer, whose new book is '' I Was a Teenage Slasher, '' is also an English professor : '' It's nice to work with faculty without that inbuilt prejudice against genre,'' he says.

.-  What books are on your night stand? 

Grady Hendrix's '' Witchcraft for Wayward Girls,'' C.J Leed's '' American Rapture,'' Stephen King's '' You Like it Darker,'' Emile Ferris's '' My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two,'' the latest issues of Fangoria and Wolverine.

.-  What book would people be surprised to find on your shelves?

Luigi Meneghello's '' The Outlaws. '' Such a funny, sad, bitter, hopeful novel.

.-  What's the last great book you read?

Rebecca Roanhorse's '' Mirrored Heavens.''  Wraps that trilogy up as perfectly as I've seen.

.-  What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

Ursula K. Le Guin's '' The Books of Earthsea.''  Roberto Bolano's. '' The Savage Detectives.''  '' The Moonstone '' by Wilkie Collins.

.-  What do you read when you're working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid?

I read what I usually read - horror, fantasy, science fiction, story collections, paleoanthropology, thrillers, crime, random articles online - except Philip K. Dick or Vonnegut. These two get me doing cheap imitations, or just being intimidated away from the page.

.-  You describe Tolly, the young hero of your new book, as ''the exact same idiot I am. '' In what ways?

He thinks he's having big important Thoughts,  but his thinking's really Fairly Pedestrian.

.-  What's the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

How Paleolithic cave art was made. Or, how Bertrand David and Jean-Jacques Lefrere argue was made in '' The Oldest Enigma of Humanity.''  It's completely changed the bedrock of the world, for me.

.-  What's the most terrifying book you've ever read?

Jack Ketchum's '' The Girl Next Door.'' It implicates the reader, makes us complicit. We side with the lesser evil in the story and think that makes us good, when really it just smears a little wrongness on us, in a way we can't wipe off.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.