Visiting Author Series, October 2, 475 Route 57 West in Washington, NJ

The Warren Community College Visiting Authors Series continues on Wednesday, October 2, with a reading by the internationally-celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates. The reading, beginning at 6:00 p.m. in room E206, is free and open to the public.

The author of over seventy books, Joyce Carol Oates has penned bestselling novels and critically acclaimed collections of short fiction, as well as essays, plays, poetry, a memoir, and an unlikely bestseller, On Boxing. Her remarkable literary industry—which includes work as an editor and anthologist—spans forms, themes, topics and genres. Writing in The Nation, critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. said, “A future archeologist equipped only with her oeuvre could easily piece together the whole of postwar America.” In 2010, reflecting the widespread esteem in which her work is held, President Barack Obama awarded Oates the National Humanities Medal.

Best known for her fiction, Oates’ novels include them, which won the National Book Award; Blonde, a bold reimagining of the inner life of Marilyn Monroe; The Falls, which won the France’s Prix Femina; The Gravedigger’s Daughter and Little Bird of Heaven, each set in upstate New York; and We Were the Mulvaneys, which follows the disintegration of an American family and which became a bestseller after being selected by Oprah’s Book Club.

Her publications include The Accursed which Stephen King described as “the world’s first postmodern Gothic novel;”  a memoir entitled The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Memoir, A Book of American Martyrs, which received the Los Angeles Times book prize; New York Times bestseller My Life as a Rat, Soul at the White Heat: Inspiration, Obsession, and the Writing Life; and Blonde. She recently edited a collection titled A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers. Among her books for 2024 are a collection of letters written with Greg Johnson titled Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer, a novel titled Butcher (Knopf, May 2024), and a forthcoming collection of stories titled Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense (Mysterious Press, November 2024).

Since 1963, forty of Oates’s books have been included on the New York Times list of notable books of the year. Among her many honors are two O. Henry Prizes and two Bram Stoker Awards, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, World Fantasy Award, and M. L. Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She has received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Book Critics Circle, the Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the PEN Center USA Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Poets & Writers Distinguished Lifetime Award. She is the subject of a documentary titled A Body in the Service of Mind, directed by Stig Björkman and produced by Mantaray Film. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and, since 1978, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The reading will be followed by a brief Q & A with the audience and a book signing.  Frenchtown Bookshop will be on site for the reading, selling Oates’ books.

            The Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Division of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, a partner agency of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. All physical site facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible. Sign language interpretation for any VAS event is available with two weeks’ notice.

Upcoming Visiting Authors Series Events–Save the Dates:

                        October 23: Novelists Lee Upton and Sung J. Woo 

                        November 13: Novelist Kate Brandes and poet Shawn R. Jones 

                        December 5: Billy Collins (former Poet Laureate of the United States)

            Warren Community College, located at 475 Route 57 West in Washington, NJ, offers creative writing workshops and literature courses. To find out more about WCCC’s course offerings, or for directions to the Washington campus, please visit www.warren.edu.