ARGUABLY THE GREATEST LIVING writer in the world to have not yet been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (she has been regarded as a favorite by readers, critics, and bookies for about twenty-five years), Joyce Carol Oates (1938–) has enjoyed a career known for its excellence, popularity, and prolificacy. Born in Lockport, New York, in the northwestern part of the state, she began to write as a young child, attended Syracuse University on scholarship, and won a Mademoiselle magazine short story award at nineteen. Her first novel, With Shuddering Fall (1964), has been followed by more than a hundred books, including fifty novels, thirty-six short story collections, three children’s books, five young adult novels, ten volumes of poetry, fourteen collections of essays and criticism, and eight volumes of plays; eleven of her novels of suspense were released under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. An overwhelming number of her novels and short stories feature such subjects as violence, sexual abuse, murder, racial tensions, and class conflicts. Many of her fictional works have been based on real-life incidents, including violent crimes.
As prolific as her writing career has been, so, too, has been the extraordinary number of major literary prizes and honors awarded to her, including a National Book Award for them (1969), as well as five other nominations; three Pulitzer Prize nominations; two O. Henry Awards for short stories; and a Bram Stoker Award for the novel Zombie (1995). Her bestselling books have been We Were the Mulvaneys (1995; aired on television in 2002 with Beau Bridges and Blythe Danner), an Oprah Book Club selection; and Blonde (2000; made for television in 2001 with Poppy Montgomery), a novel based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. The 1996 film Foxfire (starring Cathy Moriarty, Hedy Burress, and Angelina Jolie) was an adaptation of Oates’s 1993 novel Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang.
“Night-Side” was first published in the collection Night-Side (New York, Vanguard, 1977).