One of the United States' most prolific and versatile contemporary writers, Joyce Carol Oates has published more than twenty novels, hundreds of short stories in both collections and anthologies, nearly a dozen volumes of poetry, several books of nonfiction, literary criticism, and essays and many theatrical dramas and screenplays. At the age of thirty-one Oates became one of the youngest writers to receive the National Book Award for fiction. Her winning novel, them, a fictional rendering of a poor Detroit family trapped in a cycle of violence and poverty, secured her reputation as one of the most talented young writers in the United States. Her most recent work includes Where I've Been, and Where I'm going: Essays, Reviews, and Prose (Plume, 1999), Broke Heart Blues: A Novel (Dutton, 1999), and New Plays (Ontario Review Press, 1998).

Among her many awards and honors, Oates has been twice named a Pulitzer Prize finalist (1993 and 1995) and is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts grants (1966 and 1968), a Guggenheim fellowship (1967), the O. Henry Award (1967,1973 and 1983), National Book Award nominations (1968,1969 and 1990), the National Book Award for fiction (1970), the O. Henry Special Award for Continuing Achievement, (1970 and 1986), the Pushcart Prize, Bobst Award for Lifetime Achievement in Fiction (1990) and the National Book Critics Circle Award nomination. Oates is currently Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor at Princeton University and teaches in the Creative Writing Department.