Joyce Carol Oates is an American author, publishing over forty novels, as well as a number of plays, short stories, and poetry. She is one of America’s best-known and distinguished writers. She has won the National Book Award for her novel, them; two O. Henry Awards, for The Dead and In the Region of Ice; as well as the Rea Award and the National Humanities Medal. Her works, Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde, The Wheel of Love and Other Stories, and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories, were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize Award for Fiction.

Other short story works include By the North Gate, In a Region of Ice, Landfill, and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Other novels include With Shuddering Fall, A Garden of Earthly Delights, We Were the Mulvaneys, and Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart.