Joyce Carol Oates

Telling Stories - An Anthology for Writers Joyce Carol Oates

Jacket Description/Back: Drawn from Joyce Carol Oates's reading list at Princeton University, the pieces collected in Telling Stories provide beginning writers with models and inspiration for their own writing. Oates gathers here a diverse anthology of over one hundred works, including "miniature" narratives, dramatic monologues, poems that tell stories, memoir and diary excerpts, and a generous sampling of classic and contemporary short stories. Throughout, Oates has chosen exemplary writings - by relative newcomers and established authors alike - to delight readers as well as to stimulate students' own creative work. A general introduction and an afterword on the writing workshop offer students encouragement, advice, and exercises for writing. A text for creative writers, an anthology for fiction courses, Telling Stories provides a master's portrait of the art and craft of storytelling. Brief Description: Drawing on syllabi for Joyce Carol Oates s own writing seminar at Princeton University, Telling Stories gathers over one hundred works of narrative art "miniature" narratives, dramatic monologues, early stories by well-known writers, prose pieces inspired by myth, legend, and folktale, poems that tell stories, memoir and diary excerpts, two examples of genre fiction, and a generous sampling of classic and contemporary short stories selected to stimulate and inspire beginning writers as they practice and perfect their craft. Publisher Marketing: As a teacher, Oates emphasizes the importance of reading widely with enthusiasm, pleasure, and purpose. Telling Stories reflects this emphasis, introducing students to a variety of models for their own writing and encouraging them to concentrate on details, revise often, make material their own, experiment with genre, and ultimately find their own voice. Edited by a contemporary master of the storyteller s art "who defines herself primarily as a friend of the text and a friend of the writer,"Telling Stories is the perfect anthology for creative writing workshops and fiction classes and a wellspring of inspiration for any beginning writer. "The love of storytelling to hear stories, and to tell them is universal in our species. Those with an apparent talent for writing. . . are not of a special breed but simply mirror the common human desire. [If] you have a natural talent for writing, and a love of the imagination, you risk a lifelong deprivation if you fail to cultivate it as vigorously as you can. Write your own great American novel . . . you re talented, you re intelligent, you have the driving passion, and you know as much as anyone about American life. Your story belongs uniquely to you." Joyce Carol Oates, from the Introduction"

Contributor Bio:  Oates, Joyce Carol Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and the New York Times bestsellers The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina Etranger, and The Gravedigger s Daughter. She 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. In 2003 she received the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award.