The New York Times bestselling author, Joyce Carol Oates is an acclaimed author of several literary genres. She is widely regarded as a contemporary and versatile writer, who has authored more than forty novels, numerous dramas, short stories, works of poetry and non-fiction. She has also served as an editor and a literary critic. She has won several awards and anecdotes for her writing including, the National Book Award, O. Henry Award, National Humanities Medal and the Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, among many other laurels. Some of her works have also earned her the Pulitzer Prize nomination. A Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, Joyce Carol Oates previously taught at the University of Detroit and the University of Windsor. She has often written about her humble working–class upbringing in her fiction, expressing nostalgia about her growing days in the countryside outside of Lockport, New York, where she attended a 'one-room' school. Interestingly, she started writing stories since she was fourteen year old with a typewriter her grandmother had gifted her.