Oates, Joyce Carol (1938–) A widely honoured and prolific American writer, she was born in Lockport, New York, and attended Syracuse University (BA 1960) and the University of Wisconsin (MA 1961). She is also an academic, and currently teaches at Princeton University. Her first publications were short stories in By the North Gate (1963), and the novel With Shuddering Fall (1964), which like much of her other work is set in the fictional 'Eden County'.