Celestial Timepiece

Joyce Carol Oates has won the 2012 Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

The Mailer Prize, given by the Norman Mailer Center, is awarded to writers whose work over the years has challenged readers’ perspectives on the world around them. The Mailer Prize recognizes those who embrace the values that drove Norman Mailer’s work: namely, writers who fully exercise their freedom of creativity; who apply themselves to the craft of writing with the rigor of an athlete; who wish to reach a broad audience through their work; and who thrive on dialogue and debate.

The Mailer Prize honors those who share the Center’s vision of writers as people of action, those who embody the Center’s mission to preserve the role of the engaged writer as not only a legitimate, but an indispensable voice in contemporary discourse.