Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most esteemed and versatile American authors. Born in 1938 in Lockport, New York, to a poor family, she began writing at the age of fourteen when she received her first typewriter. She has engaged with nearly all literary genres—novels, short stories, poetry, plays, literary criticism, essays, and even children's literature—and is exceptionally prolific. From 1968 to 1978, she taught at the University of Windsor in Canada, during which she published two to three books a year in this creatively productive decade. Today, she teaches at Princeton University in New Jersey. Together with her husband, Raymond J. Smith, she publishes a small literary magazine (The Ontario Review). She is a highly awarded author and has been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has received numerous accolades, including America's prestigious National Book Award.