Joyce Carol Oates books

Akashic Noir Reading Order

Anthologies

Art of the Story Reading Order

Best Horror of the Year Reading Order

Dark Corners Reading Order

L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories Reading Order

Non-Fiction

Picture Reading Order

Plays

Short Stories/Novellas

Short Story Collections

Standalone Novels

The Gothic Saga Reading Order

Transgressions Reading Order

Winnie the Pooh Reading Order

Wonderland Quartet/Garden Of Earthly Delights Reading Order

Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938, in Lockport, New York, and grew up on her parents’ farm in rural western New York State. She was the first person in her family to finish high school and went on to graduate as valedictorian from Syracuse University in 1960. She earned her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and published her first short story collection, By the North Gate, in 1963. Her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, followed in 1964. From there, she kept writing at a pace that few authors have ever matched, averaging roughly two books per year across a career spanning more than six decades.

Oates won the National Book Award in 1970 for them, which became one of the defining works of her early career. Her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is one of the most widely anthologized stories in American literature, inspired by a real-life crime and first published in 1966. Other well-known novels include We Were the Mulvaneys (1996), which reached a wide audience after Oprah’s Book Club selected it, and Blonde (2000), a fictionalized portrait of Marilyn Monroe that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

In the early 1980s, Oates turned to Gothic fiction with Bellefleur (1980), the first novel in what became the Gothic Saga. These novels used elements of horror, the supernatural, and family saga to tell sprawling stories rooted in American history. She also wrote mystery and suspense novels under two pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Her output is staggering by any measure. She has published more than 58 novels along with hundreds of short stories, poetry collections, plays, essays, and works of literary criticism. Her earlier novels in the Wonderland Quartet (A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, them, and Wonderland) examined social class, race, and identity in mid-century America. Later work continued to explore violence, obsession, and the darker corners of American life while moving freely between realism, surrealism, and Gothic fantasy.

Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014 as the Roger S. Berlind Professor in the Humanities. She has received the National Humanities Medal, the Jerusalem Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and two O. Henry Awards, among many other honors.