Joyce Carol Oates told stories instinctively as a small child. After receiving the gift of a typewriter at age fourteen, she began consciously training herself, "writing novel after novel" throughout high school and college. Success came early: while attending Syracuse University on scholarship, she won the coveted Mademoiselle fiction contest. Between 1968 and 1978, Oates taught at the University of Windsor in Canada, where she published new books at the rate of two or three per year while maintaining a full-time academic career. Though still in her thirties, Oates had become one of the most respected and honored writers in the United States. In 1978, Oates moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she continues to teach in Princeton University's creative writing program. Shortly after arriving in Princeton, Oates began writing Bellefleur, the first in a series of ambitious Gothic novels that simultaneously reworked established literary genres and reimagined large swaths of American history. Oates returned powerfully to the realistic mode with ambitious family chronicles (You Must Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart) and novels of female experience (Solstice, Marya: A Life). The dramatic trajectory of Oates's career suggests a feminist, literary version of the mythic pursuit and achievement of the American dream. Yet for all her success and fame, Oates's daily routine of teaching and writing has changed very little, and her commitment to literature as a transcendent human activity remains steadfast. Her newest releases include I Am No One You Know, Small Avalanches and Other Stories, and Faith of a Writer.

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