Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon, is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honours are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates 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.Follow Joyce on @JoyceCarolOates

A splendidly chilling quartet... Oates' world is full of iniquities, and grisly ways to rectify them. But it's a world sharp with reality, for all its ghouls and sorrows

Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon, is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honours are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates 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.Follow Joyce on @JoyceCarolOates

A splendidly chilling quartet... Oates' world is full of iniquities, and grisly ways to rectify them. But it's a world sharp with reality, for all its ghouls and sorrows

Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon, is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honours are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates 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.Follow Joyce on @JoyceCarolOates

A splendidly chilling quartet... Oates' world is full of iniquities, and grisly ways to rectify them. But it's a world sharp with reality, for all its ghouls and sorrows