Joyce Carol Oates

American novelist, poet, critic, essayist and librettist. One of the most versatile writers of her generation, Oates is the author of over 90 books by 2000. Winner of the O. Henry Prize in 1967, the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968, National Book Award in 1969 and a Doubleday Special Award in 1970, she is most noted for her prolific collections of short stories and her violent, visionary novels including "Haunted," "Bellefleur," "Zombie," and "You Must Remember This."

As a child in a one-room schoolhouse in upstate New York, Oates spent ten years studying the piano coupled with an prodigious penchant for storytelling. At the age of 14 she received the gift of a typewriter and then began training herself "writing novel after novel" throughout high school and college. After graduating Syracuse University on a scholarship with a B.A. in English, Oates graduated University of Wisconsin Phi Beta Kappa with an M.A. in 1961.

After settling in Detroit, MI in 1962, her first book of short stories, "By The North Gate," was published in 1963 with her first novel, "With a Shuddering Fall," published the following year. Her finest early novel "Them," for which she won The National Book Award in 1969, grew out the experiences of the social tensions present in Detroit that Oates witnessed in the '60s. "Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse." Across the river from Detroit, she taught English at the University of Windsor, Ontario, from 1967-1978 and wrote in the evenings, often completing two or three books a year. While still in her 30's, Oates had become one of the most widely respected writers in the US. When she was once called a "workaholic," Oates replied, "I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don't think of them as work in the usual sense of the word.