Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, literary critic, professor and editor.  Oates was born in Lockport, New York. Joyce Carol Oates was born into a working-class family. She is the eldest of three children of Carolina, a homemaker of Hungarian descent, and Frederic James Oates, a tool and die designer. She was raised Catholic but is now atheist. She became interested in reading at an early age. Joyce Carol Oates developed a love for writing as a child under influence of such writers as Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Henry David Thoreau. Oates began writing at the age of 14. The Vanguard Press published Oates' first novel, “With Shuddering Fall” (1964), when she was 26 years old.

Her famous works include the novel “Them”, “Black Water”, “A Garden of Earthly Delights”, “We Were the Mulvane’s”, “Blonde”, “The Gravedigger's Daughter” and “The Accursed”. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. 

Oates has created her own straightforward and imagistic writing style. Her spare style enables the images in the story to stand out in vivid clarity, in a way that makes you feel they have some mysterious significance.