Oates, Joyce Carol

Oates, Joyce Carol (1938– ), American novelist, short- story writer, poet, and critic, born in Lockport, New York, educated at Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin. A former professor of English at the University of Detroit, where much of her work is set. She is a prolific novelist and short- story writer, whose fiction portrays intense individual experiences as expressions of the dark and violent heart of American society. Her novels, predominantly naturalistic but with suggestions of the neo-Gothic, include A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967), The Assassins (1975), Bellefleur (1980), American Appetites (1989), and What I Lived For (1994). Black Water (1992), set on an island off the coast of Maine, is the story of a young woman's meeting with a US senator at a beach party and her subsequent death by drowning. Foxfire (1993) is a powerful portrayal of a teenage girl-gang in upstate New York during the 1950s. Among many short- story collections are Upon the Sweeping Flood (1966), The Hungry Ghosts (1974), The Poisoned Kiss (1975), and Last Days (1984). She has also published collections of poetry, collections of essays, and critical writings.