Joseph Earl Thomas

Biography

Joseph Earl Thomas is the author of Sink: A Memoir (Grand Central, 2023) and the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer (Grand Central, 2024), winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His writing has been published in Harper’s, Vanity Fair, Dilettante Army, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. Thomas teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College in addition to courses in Black studies, poetics, video games, queer theory, and more at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

 

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Marcus Jackson

See Work

MEMOIR / Spring 2022

Reality Marble

By Joseph Earl Thomas ,  Illustration by Michael D. Kennedy

One day, while cutting the grass outside Lustrik Corp., Joey came across a garter snake. At Birds Birds Birds they were $11.99 each, but here was one for free, unscathed by lawn-mower blades, slithering right over the boy’s foot. It was the...
REPORTING / Spring 2025

The Game Is Played With Great Feeling

By Joseph Earl Thomas ,  Photography by Annie Flanagan

In the back of an Uber creeping down Decatur Street, my driver, Ursa, this short-haired Black woman a generation above me, is reminiscing about last week’s Frankie Beverly concert, slowing down to repeat the soft consonants of a memory too...

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