Speaker Spotlight

2026 Keynote Speaker: Stephen Graham Jones

DNRS faculty are here to expand your skill set, open new ways of thinking about your work, share their experiences, answer questions, and connect with you as a writer.

Our 2026 keynote speaker is internationally renowned author Stephen Graham Jones.

"Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions." —Stephen Graham Jones

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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.