Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938,) pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly, is an American novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. This author of over 100 books, various styles, and genres, and a five-time Pulitzer finalist is noted for her depictions of violence and evil in modern society.
Born in Millersport, New York, and educated at Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin, Oates taught at the University of Detroit, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Princeton, and University of California, Berkeley. A prolific fiction writer and essayist, she published her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, in 1964, followed by the short-story collection, Upon the Sweeping Flood (1965.)
Violent and impressive in its social scope, her fiction challenges received ideas about the nature of human experience. Them (1969,) her fourth novel, won a National Book Award. Later novels include Marya: A Life (1986,) You Must Remember This (1989,) What I Lived For (l994,) Blonde (2000; about Marilyn Monroe,) and Black Girl, White Girl (2006.)
A biography of Oates is Greg Johnson’s Invisible Writer (1998.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Joyce Carol Oates
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
—Joyce Carol Oates
Topics: Luck
It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.
—Joyce Carol Oates
Topics: Women, Men & Women, Men
A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.
—Joyce Carol Oates
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.
—Joyce Carol Oates
When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.
—Joyce Carol Oates
Topics: Reality
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