Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. She was born on June 16, 1938, in Lockport, New York. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, numerous plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction.

Her notable works include the novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collection Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014), all of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Oates has received many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award for her novel Them (1969), as well as two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).

From 1978 to 2014, Oates taught at Princeton University and held the title of the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.