Biographical notes and critical commentary provide insights into the life and career of the prolific American writer.

Joyce Carol Oates is often called America's most prolific living writer, but it is perhaps her versatility that is most astounding. Just as she is a revered novelist, playwright, poet, and critic, the short stories gathered in her 21 published collections - from By the North Gate (1963) to Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (1994) - vary in theme and style, although all evoke the bedrock natural and social reality that has consistently informed her fiction....