Introduction: American Gothic Tales
By Joyce Carol Oates Originally Published in American Gothic Tales Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright. […]
Introduction: The Oxford Book of American Short Stories
I first read this unclassifiable prose piece— hardly a “tale” in any conventional sense, still less a “story”—when I was an undergraduate at Syracuse University, and I have been haunted by its images ever since. Herman Melville, our first native feminist?—can it be so?
Why is “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” dedicated to Bob Dylan?
Joyce Carol Oates answers the frequently asked question: Joyce Carol Oates in San Francisco, City Arts & Lectures, 2004. Joyce Carol Oates on Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” […]
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
First published in Epoch, Fall 1966. Included in Prize Stories: O Henry Award Winners (1968), and The Best American Short Stories (1967). First collected in The Wheel of Love and Other Stories. INFORMATION […]
JCO: Overheard with Evan Smith
Robert Frost, family, art, technology, and teaching are all topics of this video interview with Joyce Carol Oates on “Overheard with Evan Smith.” Be sure to watch the separate audience […]
Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories
Insightful, disturbing, and mesmerizing in their lyrical precision, the stories in Lovely, Dark, Deep display Joyce Carol Oates’s astonishing ability to make visceral the fear, hurt, and uncertainty that lurks at the edges of ordinary lives.
The Short Story Collections of Joyce Carol Oates
Among contemporary writers, Joyce Carol Oates is the unrivaled American master of the short story. She has exploited the genre with such energy, versatility, and resourcefulness that critics routinely compare […]
The Works of Joyce Carol Oates
A future archeologist equipped only with her oeuvre could easily piece together the whole of postwar America.
Ontario Review 41
The 41st issue of Ontario Review, originally published Fall/Winter 1994–95, is now available online. Featuring photographs by Bill Ravanesi, the issue also includes a drama feature with plays commissioned for […]
Mark of Satan to be short film, with your help.
Independent filmmakers Brandon Nease and Jackson Wickham plan to turn Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Mark of Satan” into a short film, and you can help make this happen.
Literary Structure: An Essay in Tweets
As the first sentence or paragraph in a novel is a (hidden) signal of all that is to come, so the first story in a collection is crucial.
Upon the Sweeping Flood at 45
Oates has written many great books, and this one, though not discussed as often as her award-winning novels, is, in my opinion, her best work, and deserves to be mentioned as one of the best collections of stories in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Black Dahlia and White Rose: Unofficial Investigation
Joyce Carol Oates’s story, Black Dahlia and White Rose, inspired by the video Game LA Noire. Full story at the UK Telegraph. BLACK DAHLIA & WHITE ROSE: Unofficial Investigation into […]
Spotted Hyenas: A Romance
Six years after her first available ebook, Joyce Carol Oates offers a new story published exclusively on the Kindle. Except that it’s not. “Spotted Hyenas: A Romance” is published by […]
Blurred Genre: Two New Anthologies
Joyce Carol Oates will have new stories in two anthologies published this spring. Both are ostensibly “genre” anthologies, but appear to emphasize the blurriness of the lines usually drawn between genres. The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today’s Top Authors (edited by Jonathan Santlofer and S.J. Rozan) questions the genre distinction by mixing mystery […]
The Poisoned Kiss Revealed
The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese—Joyce Carol Oates’s numinous and unusual short story collection from 1975—has been considered an anomaly among her books, and something of a mystery.
Celestial Timepiece 