Thursday, May 30 | 7 PM | Central Library
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the prolific novelists in American history, known for both her prodigious productivity and her intellectual complexity.
She has authored nearly 60 novels, plus dozens of plays, novellas, short story and essay collections, as well as poetry and nonfiction works. She has won the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, is a five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is the namesake for the prestigious Joyce Carol Oates Prize, awarded each year to a fiction author. In 2020 she was awarded the Cino Del Duca World Prize for Literature. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities emerita at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde; and the New York Times best seller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. Her novel them won the National Book Award in 1970.
Her upcoming novel, Butcher, uses historical documents to tell the harrowing story of a women’s asylum in the 19th century, and a terrifying doctor fueled by dangerous obsessions.
The program will be moderated by Charity Nebbe. Charity is the host of the popular Iowa Public Radio show, Talk of Iowa, a show focused on culture, history, art, and literature.
Event Info
- Admission is free.
- Doors open at 6:00 PM.
- Seating is first-come, first-served.
- Free parking is available:
- In the Des Moines Public Library parking garage, located on Grand Ave.
- On the surface lot on the corner of 10th St. and Grand Ave., across from the library.
- At the end of the program, there will be a question and answer period. A book signing will follow.
- Books will be available to purchase before and after the program courtesy of Beaverdale Books.
Joyce's Books
- Butcher (2024)
- My Life as a Rat (2019)
- Blonde (2000)
- We Were the Mulvaneys (1996)
- them (1969)
Joyce on the Web
- 'Joyce Carol Oates on falling under Edward Hopper’s spell' - Hopper: An American Love Story, PBS (January 2024)
- 'Joyce Carol Oates’s Relentless, Prolific Search for a Self' - The New Yorker (November 2023)
- 'Joyce Carol Oates Figured Out the Secret to Immortality' - The New York Times Magazine (July 2023)
- 'At Home With Joyce Carol Oates' - Esquire (July 2023)