PRESS
Vol. 1 Brooklyn includes “The Legion Lonely” in their “morning bites.” Rebecca Solnit posts about it. The Hundreds’ one of “The Best Articles We Read in 2017.” Listed on this submission page under “pieces from other sites that really set the bar.” LongReads makes it an Editors’ Pick. Alison Herman at The Ringer includes it on a list of “A writers' guide to the greatest magazine articles ever.” BookForum lists “The Internet’s First Family” as one of the “best thing[s] on the Internet”. Another LongReads Editors’ Pick. Yale Journal of Law & Technology talks about it.
for Miss Misery:
“Miss Misery has some of the funniest and most perceptive dialogue in all of Canadian media. It's a painful, miserable, heart-rending delight.” — CBC: “This new webseries satirizes the existential hellscape of dating in Toronto” (Aug 20, 2019) by Chandler Levack
She Does The City: ‘MISS Misery’ Explores The Murky Terrain Of Toronto’s Dating Scene (July 22, 2019)
MUFF Society: Miss Misery interview: Jade Blair co-creator Jade Blair interviewed by Siân Melton
for The Jokes:
reviews
The Globe & Mail: Review of The Jokes: New collections from Diane Williams and Stephen Thomas show the power of flash fiction by Pasha Malla
Hong Kong Review of Books: Review of The Jokes by Stephen Lee Naish
Hobart: 30 Short Reviews of "The Director," A Joke By Me In The Current Issue of Hobart (Issue 15)
Queen Mob’s Teahouse: Review of The Jokes by Cassandra A. Baim
The Town Crier: "Literature Without A Face: A Review Of Stephen Thomas’ The Jokes" by Angus MacCaull
Buried in Print: "In My Bookbag" review of The Jokes
All Lit Up: First Fiction Fridays: The Jokes by Stephen Thomas: "In a deceptively calm tone, the stories’ narrators (narrator?) march implacably into the most whisper-desperate corners of our lives, boiling over in some stories into frantic howls and, in other stories, landing squarely on images of quiet keening beauty."
fictionfeed.net (defunct): “The Patient” — a review of "A New Place"
interviews
Metatron’s Metacösm Podcast with Brad Casey
Puritan Authors Interview with Fawn Parker on the Town Crier: "I didn’t think I was really allowed to write fiction like that, though, so I called what I was doing “jokes,” not stories, to trick myself into being allowed to write this way."
In Conversation: Stephen Thomas Discusses The Jokes: "I now see that the formalist project allowed me a way into aspects of my life and feelings I wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise, kind of like how people talk about using hallucinogens for therapy."
Rainbow Scontayo 1-minute mini-doc and blogpost: "There Ain’t One Gosh Darn Part You Can’t Tweet": "For me, fiction is getting modified by this collective internet writing thing where everyone is more connected."
The Lucky Seven Interview, With Stephen Thomas: "The idea of it being a ‘joke’ that I would write about serious things became a tool I used to get into territory I otherwise would have felt too self-conscious to explore."
Something Totally New: Part One Of Stephen Thomas In Conversation with Jess Taylor: "Sometimes they reminded me of short fiction by Lydia Davis, or pieces of poetry, zen meditations, fables or even little prayers."
Telling A Story That Works: Part Two Of Stephen Thomas In Conversation with Jess Taylor: "I guess I got really into the idea of a short story as a machine every piece of which is connected to every other piece."