WRITER

Joyce Carol Oates

1938 - Today

Photo of Joyce Carol Oates

Icon of person Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Joyce Carol Oates has received more than 2,868,495 page views. Her biography is available in 45 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 40 in 2019). Joyce Carol Oates is the 937th most popular writer (up from 1,338th in 2019), the 1,058th most popular biography from United States (up from 1,693rd in 2019) and the 102nd most popular American Writer.

Joyce Carol Oates is most famous for her novels. She has written over 50 novels and short story collections.

Memorability Metrics

  • 2.9M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 62.28

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 45

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 4.57

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.97

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Marya
Blonde
Fiction
A fictional recreation of the life of Marilyn Monroe recounts the tale of her rise to stardom, as seen from Marilyn's perspective
Them
I'll Take You There
Expensive people
Death, Parricide, Mothers
Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative and suspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America’s affluent suburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession is narrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who sees himself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding around him. Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbed parents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisively analyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious private schooling, his “successful-executive” father, and his elusive mother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-old Richard strikes out in a way that presages the violence of ever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come.
Blonde
Novela biográfica, Actores cinematográficos, Fiction
The life of Marilyn Monroe as seen by JCO. The story begins with Marilyn's birth and ends with her death. JCO creates a story that could very well be Marilyn's story, haunting.
Them
Fiction, Working class families, Young women
"A novel about class, race, and the horrific, glassy sparkle of urban life, Them chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums. Loretta, beautiful and dreamy and full of regret by age sixteen, and her two children, Maureen and Jules, make up Oates' vision of the American family - broken, marginal, and romantically proud. The novel's title refers to those Americans who inhabit the outskirts of society - men and women, mothers and children - whose lives many authors in the 1960s had left unexamined."--BOOK JACKET.
Fifty Best American Short Stories
The Best [American] Short Stories [click to find all works in series], Best American Series ®, Short Stories
Contents: Survivors / Elsie Singmaster -- Lost Phoebe / Theodore Dreiser -- Golden honeymoon / Ring W. Lardner -- I'm a fool / Sherwood Anderson -- My old man / Ernest Hemingway -- Telephone call / Dorothy Parker -- Double birthday / Willa Cather -- Faithful wife / Morley Callaghan -- Little wife / William March -- Babylon revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald-- How beautiful with shoes / Wilbur Daniel Steele -- Resurrection of a life / William Saroyan -- Only the dead know Brooklyn / Thomas Wolfe -- Life in the day of a writer / Tess Slesinger -- Iron City / Lovell Thompson -- Christ in concrete / Pietro Di Donato -- Chrysanthemums / John Steinbeck -- Bright and morning star / Richard Wright -- Hand upon the waters / William Faulkner -- Net / Robert M. Coates -- Nothing ever breaks except the heart / Kay Boyle -- Search through the streets of the city / Irwin Shaw -- Who lived and died believing / Nancy Hale -- Peach stone / Paul Horgan -- Dawn of remembered spring / Jesse Stuart -- Catbird seat / James Thurber -- Of this time, of that place / Lionel Trilling -- Wind and the snow of winter / Walter Van Tilburg Clark -- Enormous radio / John Cheever -- Children are bored on Sunday / Jean Stafford -- NRACP / George P. Elliott -- In Greenwich there are many gravelled walks / Hortense Calisher -- Other foot / Ray Bradbury -- Three players of a summer game / Tennessee Williams -- Mother's tale / James Agee -- Magic barrel / Bernard Malamud -- Circle in the fire / Flannery O'Connor -- First flower / Augusta Wallace Lyons -- Contest for Aaron Gold / Philip Roth -- One ordinary day, with peanuts / Shirley Jackson -- To the wilderness I wander / Frank Butler -- Ledge / Lawrence Sargent Hall -- This morning, this evening, so soon / James Baldwin -- Tell me a riddle / Tillie Olsen -- Old army game / George Garrett -- Pigeon feathers / John Updike -- Sound of a drunken drummer / H.W. Blattner -- Keyhole eye / John Stewart Carter -- Long day's dying / William Eastlake -- Upon the sweeping flood / Joyce Carol Oates.
I'll Take You There
Race relations, Literature, Fiction
E-book exclusive: "Conceived in the Mode of Memoir," Afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.Funny, mordant, and compulsive, "Anellia" falls passionately in love with a brilliant yet elusive black philosophy student. But she is tested most severely by a figure out of her past she'd long believed dead."In those days in the early Sixties we were not women yet but girls. This was, without irony, perceived as our advantage."
Marya
Fiction, Women intellectuals, Orphans
In MARYA, A LIFE, Oates attempts to fill that void. Marya is a portrait of a modern woman from a bewildered childhood to a womanhood that commands admiration, respect and love. She is a loner, bright and different from the people around her. She strives for self understanding and fulfillment.

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Joyce Carol Oates ranks 937 out of 7,302Before her are Aimé Césaire, Thomas Pynchon, Jean de La Bruyère, Mirza Fatali Akhundov, Lafcadio Hearn, and Ouyang Xiu. After her are Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Leconte de Lisle, Rustichello da Pisa, Nellie Bly, James Jones, and Pierre Larousse.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1938, Joyce Carol Oates ranks 57Before her are Kurt Wüthrich, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Frederick Forsyth, Issey Miyake, Lynn Margulis, and Oliver Reed. After her are Brian Dennehy, Marcello Gandini, István Szabó, Dean Reed, Bounnhang Vorachith, and Ed Lauter.

Others Born in 1938

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Joyce Carol Oates ranks 1,058 out of 20,380Before her are Edward Norton Lorenz (1917), Gary Sinise (1955), Ed O'Neill (1946), Jack Kirby (1917), Groucho Marx (1890), and Frank B. Kellogg (1856). After her are Alicia Keys (1981), Nellie Bly (1864), James Jones (1921), John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1899), Julian Schwinger (1918), and Peggy Guggenheim (1898).

Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, Joyce Carol Oates ranks 102Before her are Sherwood Anderson (1876), L. Ron Hubbard (1911), Walter Lippmann (1889), Thomas Wolfe (1900), Clifford D. Simak (1904), and Thomas Pynchon (1937). After her are Nellie Bly (1864), James Jones (1921), L. Frank Baum (1856), Virginia Satir (1916), Stephen Covey (1932), and Donna Leon (1942).