Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. She completed her B.A. at Syracuse University in 1960, and she was awarded an M.A. by the University of Wisconsin in 1961. On 23 January 1961 she married Raymond J. Smith. From 1961 to 1965 she was an instructor in English at the University of Detroit, and from 1965 to 1967 she was an assistant professor at the University of Windsor. In 1968 she won the Rosenthal Foundation Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for her second novel, A Garden of Earthly Delights, and in 1970 a National Book Award for her fourth novel, them. Oates presently teaches at Princeton University.

More frequently known for her fiction than for her poetry, Oates had her first collection of stories, By the North Gate, published in 1963. The title is taken from a poem by Rihaku in which the north gate is the boundary between civilization and...