Shirley Jackson Award Finalist

Joyce Carol Oates’s story collection Wild Nights! is among the finalists for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award. Other finalists in the “collection” category include A Better Angel, Chris Adrian; Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser; The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa; The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret; and Just After Sunset, Stephen King.
The Shirley Jackson Awards ”have been established for outstanding achievement in [...]

Read Full Post »

National Arts Club Award

Joyce Carol Oates was awarded the Medal of Honor in Literature at the National Arts Club on April 7th. The event was emceed by Roger Rosenblatt, with remarks given by JCO’s editor at Ecco Press, Dan Halpern, fellow Princeton author Edmund White, and artist Gloria Vanderbilt.
In a gossipy New York Observer article, Leon Neyfakh reports on [...]

Read Full Post »

Man Booker Shortlist

Joyce Carol Oates is among the contenders this year for the biennial Man Booker International Prize, recognizing one writer for their achievement in fiction. Previous winners were Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Ismail Kadare in 2005. 
The Man Booker International Prize echos and reinforces the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that literary excellence will be its sole [...]

Read Full Post »

Fifty Years

Joyce Carol Oates published her first “professional” work fifty years ago this year.
When she was a junior at Syracuse University, JCO entered her short story “In the Old World” in the Mademoiselle College Fiction Competition. The story was selected as co-winner of the competition (two winners each year) and was published in the August 1959 [...]

Read Full Post »

Kentucky Welcomes JCO

Cheryl Truman, books editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, profiles and interviews Joyce Carol Oates in advance of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.
Tidbits of interest:
Oates didn’t used to be much of a TV watcher but admits immersing herself in tabloid-news TV to research My Sister, My Love: Bill O’Reilly, Geraldo Rivera and Nancy Grace (“I think sometimes she [...]

Read Full Post »

JCO on the Fringe

Two Joyce Carol Oates-related events will be presented at The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) in August:
The first is a play based on  JCO’s novel Zombie. The play is adapted and performed by Bill Connington, who notes that “by the end of the play … you might feel some empathy for a man who [...]

Read Full Post »

JCO Miscellany: Three

John Ranard
We note the death of social-documentary photographer John Ranard last month, best known to Joyce Carol Oates fans for his work included in her book On Boxing. Quoted in The Villager, a close friend of Ranard’s said, “John was such a gentle, talented and unique human being—a true artist and individualist, with a [...]

Read Full Post »

Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008

Ace anthologist Ellen Datlow—called “the premiere horror editor of her generation” by Publisher’s Weekly—has announced in her blog the contents of the The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008 which will include Joyce Carol Oates’s story “Valentine, July Heat Wave.” The story was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and later collected in The [...]

Read Full Post »

JCO in Pushcart Prize

Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “Nowhere,” originally published in Conjunctions, is included in the 2008 edition of The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. This is JCO’s twelfth piece in the prize anthology.
Other recent JCO works in award anthologies include the short stories “Meadowlands” (The Best American Mystery Stories, 2007), “Babysitter” (Horror: The Best [...]

Read Full Post »

JCO a Finalist for Two NBCC Awards

The National Book Critics Circle announced their 2007 award finalists, and Joyce Carol Oates’s works are named in two categories: The Gravedigger’s Daughter for the fiction award, and The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982 for the autobiography award. The winners will be announced on March 6. JCO last had an NBCC award finalist in [...]

Read Full Post »