Joyce Carol Oates

The Books That Scare the Crap Out of Us

There’s nothing quite like a great scare. Whether it’s the anticipation of monsters under your bed or the freaky feeling of shadowy figures hiding just around a darkened corner, being scared is certainly an adrenaline rush we enjoy. What intensifies the thrill of a great scare for us is […]

Declaration of Independence: Justin Hamm on the museum of americana

Declaration of Independence: Justin Hamm on the museum of americana This past summer, Justin Hamm took a creative leap of faith. Merging a love of historical American culture with online publishing, he founded the literary review the museum of americana, and in swift order assembled a website, an editorial team […]

Birthdays

On this day, June 16, in 1938, Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. The first of her family to graduate high school, she became an avid reader early and began writing at age 14. She won a short story contest at 19 and published her first work, the short-story collection By the North Gate, shortly after earning her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since then she has published over 40 novels (including National Book Award-winners) as well as plays, novellas, short stories, poetry, and works of nonfiction. Just this year, she has published two more volumes of short stories (last year she published her 59 th novel, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.) Today she turns 83.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.