Joyce Carol Oates has for a long time been present in my world; albeit oftentimes peripheral. I’m aware of her. I’ve read about her. But, while I have her Conversations 1970-2006 on my bookshelf I haven’t read it. I bought it because I expected Oates to become more a part of my world when I got to a point where time to read and think was a more realistic possibility. On the basis of the following audio recording I remain convinced this will become the case, but perhaps its her non-fiction rather than her fiction that will become important to me. Her Melbourne talk is a rich and insightful talk / lecture. I understand Oates importance more.
The recording is of a lecture / talk she delivered in this years 2017 Melbourne Writers Festival (25/08/17 to 03/09/17). She talked twice, and this was her first talk on the 26th August at 6:15am.
The talk aired on Australia’s Radio National Books and Arts programme. Here’s the promo:
“Writers are not only storytellers, they are also witnesses to the world around them, reflecting and critiquing it through their imagined worlds.
For the Melbourne Writers Festival, iconic American author Joyce Carol Oates delves into ethics, empathy and bearing witness as a novelist, and how fiction gives both readers and writers the opportunity to explore and understand both sides of complex, multifaceted issues.”
You’ll find the talk here. Her most recent novel is A Book of American Martyrs: A Novel (published Feb. 2017)
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