Poetry Jones released his debut poetry
chapbook in 2011. Titled
When the Only Light is Fire, it was the top-selling book in the Gay Poetry category on Amazon for several weeks.
The Kenyon Review said the work "evokes a perilous, often mythic, eroticism within a brutalizing context of violence."
TIME Magazine recommended it as "an engrossing read best consumed in as few sittings as possible." It was a 2014 finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. In September 2022, Jones published another poetry collection,
Alive at the End of the World. Jones has been a winner of the
Pushcart Prize, the Joyce Osterwell Award for Poetry from the
PEN Literary Awards, and the
Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Award for Literature, and a nominee for the
2014 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Jones has been featured on
PBS NewsHours poetry series and on
So Popular! with Janet Mock on
MSNBC. He was featured on the cover of
Hello Mr. in 2015.
Prose and other projects Jones previously worked for
BuzzFeed as the founding LGBT editor and its executive culture editor. While at BuzzFeed, Jones cohosted BuzzFeed News' morning show
AM to DM from fall 2017 until mid-2019. Jones also wrote an advice column for BuzzFeed's
READER newsletter entitled "Dear Ferocity." His memoir
How We Fight for Our Lives was published by
Simon & Schuster in 2019.
The New Yorker called the book's tone and content "urgent, immediate, matter of fact". NPR called it an "outstanding memoir" with "elements that profoundly connect him to poetry" and to "many of us who grew up dreaming of a chance at upward social mobility". The book won the
Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2019 and a
Lambda Literary Award in 2020. In 2022, Jones's interview with
Debbie Millman was featured on the
Storybound (podcast) season 5 premiere. In August 2022, Jones launched a
Sirius XM podcast called
Vibe Check. Co-hosted by
Sam Sanders and
Zach Stafford, the podcast focuses on "news and culture from a Black and queer perspective." == Personal life ==