[This entry was updated by Sarah Catlin Barnhart (University of South Carolina) from the update by Nancy Barendse (Charleston Southern University) in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, volume 6, pp. 216-241, of the entries by Michael Joslin (University of South Carolina) in DLB 2: American Novelists Since World War II, Alex Bateman (University of South Carolina) in DLB 5: American Poets Since World War II, and Holly Mims Westcott in DLB Yearbook 1981, and from the entry by Marilyn C. Wesley (Hartwick College) in DLB 130: American Short-Story Writers Since World War II.]

Creating fictional worlds has always been an obsession for Joyce Carol Oates. She began as a child--even before she could write she told her tales through pictures. During her elementary school years she wrote stories and constructed two-hundred-page books, which she designed and bound herself. When she was fifteen her first novel submitted to a publisher was rejected...