When you’re very little, like you’re six years old, and you don’t have certain things, the book, even though it’s impenetrable and you can’t even read it, becomes very talismanic.
Joyce Carol Oates
's brimming catalogue encompasses award-winning fiction, essays, and criticism. Just after the publication of
Black Girl / White Girl in 2006, she was honored with the
Chicago Tribune Literary Prize. She spoke with the
Tribune’s
Julia Keller and
Ann Marie Lipinski about the stories she loved as a child, her primary school teacher in upstate New York, her relatives so incredible she couldn’t translate them to fiction, writing pedagogy, and much more.