Assistant Professor of English, Jeremy Griffin, released “Scream Queens” earlier this month. The book is composed of ten realistic fiction short stories, telling the lives of characters facing conflict and disaster.
In 2023, Griffin was the recipient of The Hudson Prize for “Scream Queens” awarded by Black Lawrence Press.
Griffin did not originally intend to create a collection of short stories. In fact, they all began as separate stories written throughout the last few years starting in 2017. In 2022, he realized the short stories all worked together in terms of their shared themes, so he tied them all together in “Scream Queens”.
“Even though the stories are all very different – they’re different characters in different places dealing with different things – they’re similar in the sense that these characters are all struggling,” Griffin said. “They’re all dealing with failures, either that they have already dealt with or they’re about to fail.”
He believes Simpson students could especially relate to the themes of failure and success.
“I know especially in the academic setting, the word failure is one that you hear a lot. You’re just trying so hard to just succeed, succeed, succeed.”
Griffin is also very interested in what people do for a living, and how that ties into the way we view people. With many students at Simpson engaging in a variety of work experiences, he thinks students may relate to his characters despite any differences in characteristics like age or gender.
Besides the stories themselves, one of Griffin’s favorite parts of the book is the cover. The covers of his past works were either grim or in black and white. This time around, he wanted to do something different.
“I made sure this book had color in the cover, I wanted something fun,” Griffin said.
On Nov. 9, there was a meet the author event for “Scream Queens” at Beaverdale Books. Griffin was happy with the turnout at the event, as many of his students and Simpson faculty attended.
“I’m very proud that it’s out and I’m very pleased with how Simpson has helped spread the word,” he said.
Senior Hazel Morgan-Fine attended the event with some of her classmates and recognized many other faces from Simpson.
“It was just fantastic. The story he was reading was darker, but it still gave a really good message and it was interesting. The characters were very realistic.”
Having read the book, she would recommend “Scream Queens” to anyone who is interested in a short piece of fiction or a collection of short, realistic stories.
Griffin hopes people will go out, pick it up and enjoy reading it. He would love to hear from students, chat about his book and answer any questions anyone might have for him regarding his book.
This post was originally published on here
