Joyce Carol Oates in Kansas City

Time for a brief non-Christmas interlude. The incredible Joyce Carol Oates appeared at a "Writers at Work" engagement at the Kansas City Public Library on Monday, November 8. Ms. Oates read a recently completed short story (completed, she said, about a week ago) titled "A Brutal Murder in a Public Place". After her reading, Kansas City author Whitney Terrell, who was a student of Ms. Oates at Princeton, conducted a Q & A session about the approach to writing.

Joyce was energetic and witty throughout the evening, frequently bantering with Whitney, and always with the upper hand. Still the teacher, still the student. As a huge fan of Joyce Carol Oates (with well over 100 [yes, 100] of her books), I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. And my wife, who has not read any of Ms. Oates work, also thought it was an entertaining engagement with a renowned author.

The evening ended with a previously unannounced book signing! I never attend an author event without books, so I came away with three books signed by the author.

"Sourland" by Joyce Carol Oates

“Sourland” is Joyce Carol Oates latest story collection, her 23^rd according to the list inside the book, although there are a few from smaller presses that aren’t listed (“Wild Saturdays”, “Oates in Exile”).  Oates’ stories describe the horror that can occur in real life.  Monsters in the traditional sense are absent from her stories, replaced by terrors that can occur in our cities and small towns as we live our lives.  So far, I’ve only read the first story in this collection, “Pumpkin-Head”.  It has some classic Oatesian characteristics – a relationship gone bad, antagonist-as-self, and villains lurking inside and out. 

xhttp://www.amazon.com/Sourland-Stories-Joyce-Carol-Oates/dp/0061996521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287266944&sr=8-1