Joyce Carol Oates VIP Reception

There is no more versatile and accomplished American writer than Joyce Carol Oates.The author of many books, Oates has penned bestselling novels, critically acclaimed collections of short fiction, as well as essays, plays, poetry, a memoir, “A Widow’s Story,” and an unlikely bestseller, “On Boxing.” Her remarkable literary industry – which includes work as an editor and anthologist – spans forms, themes, topics and genres. Writing in “The Nation,” critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. said, “A future archeologist equipped only with her oeuvre could easily piece together the whole of postwar America.” In 2010, reflecting the widespread esteem in which her work is held, President Barack Obama awarded Oates the National Humanities Medal.

Best known for her fiction, Oates’ novels include them, which won the National Book Award; “Blonde,” a bold re-imagining of the inner life of Marilyn Monroe; “The Falls,” which won the France’s Prix Femina; “The Gravedigger’s Daughter” and “Little Bird of Heaven,” each set in upstate New York; and “We Were the Mulvaneys,” which follows the disintegration of an American family and which became a bestseller after being selected by Oprah’s Book Club.

“High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories 1966-2006” gathers Oates’ short fiction from earlier collections and includes eleven additional tales that further demonstrate the artistry and originality of a writer who “has imbued the American short story with an edgy vitality and raw social surfaces” (Chicago Tribune). Included in this volume is Oates’ most anthologized short story,“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Inspired by a song by Bob Dylan, it was later adapted as a film, “Smooth Talk.” It is one of a handful of Oates’ works made into films or movies for television, including “Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang” (2012), by Palme d’Or winner Laurent Cantet. Oates’ novel “Blonde” was adapted for the stage by Argia Coppola as “Love is Blonde.” In 2022, “Blonde” was adapted as a film for Netflix directed by Andrew Dominik and starring Ana de Armas.

Her publications include “The Accursed,” which Stephen King described as “the world’s first postmodern Gothic novel,” “Carthage,” which was a New York Times bestseller, a memoir entitled “The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Memoir,” “A Book of American Martyrs,” which received the Los Angeles Times book prize, New York Times bestseller “My Life as a Rat,” “Soul at the White Heat: Inspiration, Obsession, and the Writing Life,” and the 20th Anniversary Edition of “Blonde.” Her books from 2021 were “The (Other) You,” “American Melancholy,” “Night,” “Neon: Tales of Mystery and Suspense,” and a novel titled “Breathe,” which received a ‘star’ review from Publishers Weekly. Her books for 2022 were “Extenuating Circumstances,” which received a ‘star’ review from Publishers Weekly, and “Babysitter.” Her books for 2023 are “48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister,” a book of short stories titled “Zero Sum” (Knopf, July 18, 2023), and she has edited a collection titled “A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers” (Akashic Books, September 5, 2023). Among her books for 2024 will be a collection of letters written with Greg Johnson titled “Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer” (Akashic Books, March 5, 2024), and a novel titled “Butcher” (Knopf, May 21, 2024).

Since 1963, forty of Oates’s books have been included on the New York Times list of notable books of the year. Among her many honors are two O. Henry Prizes and two Bram Stoker Awards, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, World Fantasy Award, and M. L. Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She has received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Book Critics Circle, the Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the PEN Center USA Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Poets & Writers Distinguished Lifetime Award, the Bilbao BBK Ja! Prize, The Jerusalem Prize, the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca, and the 2023 Taobuk Award for Literary Excellence. She is the subject of a documentary titled “A Body in the Service of Mind,” directed by Stig Björkman and produced by Mantaray Film.

Joyce Carol Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and since 1978, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.