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Joseph Earl Thomas

Biography

Joseph Earl Thomas

Joseph Earl Thomas is the author of SINK, a memoir that was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; the novel GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER, and the forthcoming story collection LEVIATHAN BEACH. His writing has been published in The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Dilettante Army and The New York Times Book Review. His honors include the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize, and fellowships from Kimbilio, VONA, Tin House and Bread Loaf.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s MFA program in prose, he is earning a PhD in English at The University of Pennsylvania. He is also a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, and teaches courses in Black Studies, Poetics, Video Games, Queer Theory and more at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

Joseph Earl Thomas

Books by Joseph Earl Thomas

God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer
by Joseph Earl Thomas - Fiction

After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round-the-clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak and responsibility.

Sink: A Memoir
by Joseph Earl Thomas - Memoir, Nonfiction

Surrounded by the failure of systems, including his family, the public school system and democratic society, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling like he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, most lessons were taught through violence, and, to make matters worse, he always seemed to be hungry. To escape these foes, he began retreating inward. In SINK, Thomas queries the possibility of escape through fantasy worlds, while grappling with children’s inability to change their circumstances. In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the trouble of cruelty without heroics or reprieve and explores how the cycle of hostility permeates our environments. And yet, even in the depths of isolation, there are unexpected moments of joy carved out as Thomas finds kinship.