Joyce Carol Oates

Astonishingly prolific, Joyce Carol Oates has covered the gamut of literary forms, from mystery novels to literary fiction, poetry to criticism. Yet even as she experiments with traditions and genres, at the heart of all her work is her thrilling exploration of an individual's inner life. Oates is notorious for making her protagonists convincingly complicit in their own destruction; in her much-anthologized story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" a young girl is kidnapped yet, in significant ways, willingly surrenders her life to her amorous kidnapper. Because of this kind of emotional instability, many of Oates' characters may at any moment become predator or prey. Indeed, an undercurrent of violence characterizes much of Oates' body of work, whether it's in the grit of the Detroit streets in her National Book Award-winning them or in the rampage of a killer in Zombie. In A Widow's Story: A Memoir, Oates is in newly personal territory as she details her grief following the death of her longtime husband and publishing partner Raymond J. Smith. Though many have criticized Oates for her voluminous output, claiming she's sacrificed quality to incessant quantity, few would dispute that she is a major figure of contemporary American literature.