Joyce Carol Oates By Ria

Joyce Carol Oates was a famous author who was born in Lockport, New York on June 16th 1938. Growing up Joyce was raised as a catholic, she lived with her mother, Rita Oats and grandmother, Blanche Woodside, who was “very close” to her. Once her grandmother, Blanche passed away, Joyce found out her father had killed himself and also that her grandmother was keeping her Jewish heritage a secret from her. Later on in life in her writing she wrote The Gravedigger’s Daughter, based on her grandmothers life.

In Oates’ early education she was very interested in reading, and she went to school in a one- room school, in which her own mother attended in her own childhood. And while gettin

g more interested in reading and literature, her grandmother gave her Lewis Carrolls’ “Alice in Wonderland”, and she was in love with this book. Joyce immediately began writing when she got her first type writer at the age of 14 , with the influences of such writers like; William Faulkner, Emily Bronte, and Henry David Thoreau. Growing up, she moved on to bigger, more suburban schools. She attended Williamsville South High School, in which she wrote the school newspaper, she was apart of the graduating class of 1956. With earning a scholarship in high school, she attended Syracuse University where she won the Mademoiselle fiction contest. She graduated from that college as valedictorian. In 1962 Joyce was married to Raymond J. Smith.

Oates taught in the University of Windsor in Canada for 10 years during 1968 and 1978. while teaching at the collage she was still writing on her free time. Oates was writing an average of 2-3 books a year. While being interviewed the interviewer called her a “workaholic” to where she responded “I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don't think of them as work in the usual sense of the word.”

Joyce Carol has been, and STILL is one of the worlds most successful writers. She has written; 56 novels, more than 30 collections of short stories, plays, and poems. She still continues to write today. Oates has no children her first husband Raymond J. Smith. Passed away in 2008 due to complications of pneumonia. She recently re-married to Professor Charles Gross of the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Institute at Princeton.

Novels by Joyce Carol Oates: