Joyce Carol Oates - (1938 -)
(Also wrote under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, playwright, author of children's books, nonfiction writer, and poet.
Considered one of the most prolific and versatile contemporary American writers, Oates has published, since the start of her award-winning literary career in 1963, more than twenty novels; hundreds of short stories in both collections and anthologies; nearly a dozen volumes of poetry; several books of nonfiction, literary criticism, and essays; and many theatrical dramas and screenplays. Writing in a dense, elliptical style that ranges from realistic and naturalistic to surrealistic, Oates concentrates on the spiritual, sexual, and intellectual malaise of modern American culture in her fiction, exposing the dark aspects of the human condition. Her tragic and violent plots abound with depictions of rape, incest, murder, mutilation, child abuse, and suicide, and her protagonists often suffer as a result of the conditions of their social milieu or their emotional weaknesses. Although her works in other genres address similar issues, most critics concur that her short fiction best conveys the urgency and emotional power of her principal themes. Among the dominant motifs in Oates's collected fiction is her evocation of a profoundly Gothic sensibility in American culture.
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