Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Accursed. Her memoir The Lost Landscape was published by Ecco in September 2015. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
Fiction
Sept/Oct 2017
The Long-Legged Girl
On the bathroom counter she’d come to hate (it was old, beige-flesh-toned Formica, with faint cracks you could not help mistake with a shudder of repugnance for loose hairs) the […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1965
Notions Good and Bad
Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. The Viking Press, $7.50. Bad Characters by Jean Stafford. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $4.95. Cabot Wright Begins by James Purdy. Farrar, Straus and […]
Fiction
Sept/Oct 2015
Fleuve Bleu
Midafternoon, late autumn, bars of spangled light on the river, he was crossing the bridge on the pedestrian walkway fluttering with flags when he’d first seen her, not knowing it […]
The Kenyon Review Credos
Fall 2014
This I Believe: Five Motives for Writing
It is a very self-conscious thing to speak of one’s “credo.” I think that most writers and artists love their work, which of course we don’t consider “work”—exactly. As artists […]
Fiction
Winter 2014
The Home at Craigmillnar
Early shift is 6:30 a.m., which was when I arrived at the elder care facility at Eau Claire where I have been an orderly for two years. Maybe thirty minutes […]
Fiction
Fall 2010
A Hole in the Head
Strange!—though Dr. Brede wore latex gloves when treating patients and never came into direct contact with their skin, when he peeled off the thin rubber gloves to toss them into […]
Fiction
Winter 2009
The Spill
1. Once, a farm family named Braam lived on fifty acres of land abutting the Black River in a steeply hilly, densely forested part of Herkimer County, New York, known […]
Fiction
Summer 2005
Surprise Surprise!
“Rashid? Come in, please take a seat.” Glancing up as if pleasantly surprised. As if she hadn’t been expecting him. Dreading his arrival, yet hoping he would come. For if […]
Fiction
Winter 2002
Madison at Guignol
This Saturday in mid-October, sunlight blazing as if overhead there’s an immense fiery eye opening wider, wider, wider. What I’ve been seeking, today I will find. I know! Mrs. G. […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Winter 1998
The Action of Mercy
I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. . . . For me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption of Christ and what I see in the […]
Nonfiction
Summer/ Autumn 1997
In Olden Times, When Wishing Was Having …: Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales
1. Whatever is an exit from that country … cannot be an entrance. JOHN CROWLEY, “The Green Child” The fairy tale, as a literary/cultural genre, has traditionally been associated with […]
Fiction
Winter 1997
Faithless
1. The last time my mother Cornelia Nissenbaum and her sister Constance saw their mother was the day before she vanished from their lives forever, April 11, 1923. It was […]
Fiction
Summer 1995
Death Mother
Driving the car fast, then faster. Then braking. Then releasing the brake. And again her foot hard on the gas pedal and the car leapt forward and I wasn’t crying, […]
Drama
Autumn 1992
From the Secret Mirror: Four Short Plays
THE CALL Lights up. A man, in his thirties, of moderate height, not overly muscular but implicitly aggressive, addresses the audience. He wears casual clothes, is neither stylish nor poorly […]
Fiction
Spring 1990
The Maker of Parables
M., the maker of parables, a small dwarfish delicately built man with shining dark eyes, lived inside a large slovenly bearlike man of late middle age. Each morning the two […]
Poetry
Spring 1990
I Stand before You Naked
I stand before you naked, waiting to be loved. I stand before you naked and shameless, waiting to be loved. I stand before you naked waiting to be loved so […]
Fiction
Autumn 1989
The Handclasp
He saw something in her face she had not known was there. He gripped her shoulders, gently, not hard, as if to comfort, or to constrain, and asked, “Is it […]
Fiction
Autumn 1987
House Hunting
How subtly the season of mourning shaded into a season of envy. To their knowledge they had never been envious people, but suddenly they caught themselves staring at families, young […]
Fiction
Spring 1986
Little Wife
I Damn his soul to hell, Judd was the first to notice the girl across the street from the cafe though he was too sleepy to know that he was […]
Poetry
Autumn 1985
Mud-Elegy
Late summer. And the pond is mud. Rivulets of mud, fleshy mud, a curviform alphabet of mud. The dragonflies glitter like needles, the wasps’ angry drone has its logic, and […]
Poetry
Autumn 1985
May Elegy
Boredom is the only subject. The dizzy brain at rest, at last, bobbing in debris. Slapping against the wharf. How did it feel, we asked, and you said, Well—like nothing […]
Poetry
Autumn 1985
The Triumph of Gravity
Luncheon lasting past three o’clock, another invitation I won’t reciprocate, April blossoms, linen napkins, the usual politesse. Professor of physics, emeritus, sits erect in his wheelchair and amuses the table […]
Fiction
Autumn 1983
Old Budapest
On her second morning in Budapest, Marianne Beecher inconspicuously left the conference headquarters in a Soviet-built Fiat driven by a Hungarian editor who wanted, as he said, very much to […]
Fiction
Autumn 1981
My Warszawa
Agent-provocateur. In room 371 of the Hotel Europejski in Warsaw a bellboy in a tight-fitting uniform is asking Carl Walser a question. In English. But it is not an English […]
Poetry
Autumn 1980
The Child-Bride
Immortalized by my ancient wedding gown and my hopeful grimace and your silent awe as the wind whips your hair to a frenzy and your eyes sting with tears you […]
Fiction
Autumn 1979
White Shadow
One of them, the noisiest and boldest, is a beautiful child of about six years of age. A girl with long untidy chestnut-colored hair that straggles past her shoulders, and […]
Fiction
Autumn/ September 1966
Gifts
Richard was seven when his father left his home. The event froze something permanently into his face, so that he squinted unnecessarily as if fearful that some detail, some tiny […]
Fiction
Summer 1965
At the Seminary
Mr. Downey left the expressway at the right exit, but ten minutes later he was lost. His wife was sitting in the back seat of the car, her round, serious […]
Fall 2015
Bloodline, Elegy: Su Qijian Family, Beijing
In the mud-colored Hai River a swirl of infant-girl bodies. In the river-trance the infant girls are propelled with the current. You stare, you blink—she has vanished. But—here is another, […]
Weekend Reads
In Olden Times, When Wishing Was Having . . . Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Summer/Autumn 1997, Vol. XIX, No. 3-4 1. Whatever is an exit from that country . . . cannot be an entrance. John Crowley, “The […]
The Maker of Parables
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Spring 1990, Vol. XII, No. 2 M., the maker of parables, a small dwarfish delicately built man with shining dark eyes, lived inside a […]