Kiss and Tell
Contents
- About John Sam Jones
- Praise for John Sam Jones’s fiction
- Dedication
- Title Page
- Tidy: an introduction by David Llewellyn
- Welsh Boys Too
- The Birds Don’t Sing…
- Sharks on the Bedroom Floor
- The Wonder at Seal Cave
- But Names will Never Hurt Me
- My Velvet Eyes
- The Magenta Silk Thread
- Etienne’s Vineyard
- Pocket Sprung and Nested
- Fishboys of Vernazza
- The Fishboys of Vernazza
- Just Beyond the Buddleia Bush
- A Particular Passion
- The Wedding Invitation
- Eucharist
- Food For Thoughts
- Between the Devil and the Virgin
- Mischief and Deep Secrets
- Gifts
- The View from Sasso Fermo
- Fridolin’s Dance
- Kiss and Tell
- Medi’s Wedding Dress
- Copyright
John Sam Jones was born in Barmouth on the north-west coast of Wales in 1956. After secondary school at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech he went on to study biology at Aberystwyth University, and then theology as a World Council of Churches Scholar in Berkeley, California. He realised he was gay as a teenager at the beginning of the 1970s and began his life-long coming out at the age of eighteen.
His collection of short stories – Welsh Boys Too – was an Honor Book winner in the American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards. His second collection was the acclaimed Fishboys of Vernazza, which was short-listed for the Wales Book of the Year. He has also published two novels With Angels and Furies and Crawling Through Thorns. He published a memoir The Journey is Home, Notes from a Life on the Edge in 2021 which also appeared in Welsh, translated by Sian Northey, as Y Daith Ydi Adra, Stori Gŵr ar y Ffin.
After working in ministry, education and public health for more than thirty years, John lives with his husband in a small German village a stone’s throw from the Dutch border.
Praise for John Sam Jones’s fiction
‘This hugely enjoyable collection of short stories by John Sam Jones provides an insight into everything from the desire to be a parent to being coshed with a stubby fencing picket following a disappointing woodland liaison… poignant, often touching stories lead one to conclude that we are what we are but considering the deep-seated prejudice which unbelievably still exists in the 21st century, some of us are more comfortable facing the truth than others.’ The Big Issue
‘Welsh Boys Too, addressing the lives of gay men in contemporary Wales, was immediately recognised as a ground-breaking moment in Welsh writing in English… in this new collection of ten well-crafted stories, Jones writes as a returned native confronting the entrenched prejudice that has too often driven Welsh gay men into permanent exile… it reminds us that gay Wales is not just a minority concern.’ Planet
‘Jones writes sensitive, skillful and fat-free stories. This book is a must… and would make an excellent starting-point for anyone wishing to dip into queer fiction for the first time.’ gwales.com
‘John Sam Jones created a storm with his first collection of stories, Welsh Boys Too, about homosexuality in Wales. Now he has followed up his award-winning book with another sensual collection of stories… A former chair of the advisory body on gay and lesbian issues to the Assembly, Jones is not one to shy away from the questions faced by his characters… clever, poignant and perceptive.’ The Daily Post