Author Joyce Carol Oates to visit campus Monday

Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates is coming to campus to read and lecture at 5 p.m. Monday in the Solarium Room of the Indiana Memorial Union.

The event, brought to IU by The College Arts and Humanities Institute, is part of a lecture series financed by the College of Arts and Sciences.

The series includes various guest speakers who will come to share their work and aim to inspire others. Oates will talk about her most recent works regarding gender issues and her role as a female writer in the United States, said Andrea Ciccarelli, director of the institute.

Oates has received distinguished awards for her publications including novels, short story collections, literary criticisms, volumes of poetry and numerous plays.

“She is really difficult to match,” Ciccarrelli said. “I don’t know anyone in the English language today that has written on such broad topics on such a professional scale.”

Some of Oates’ recent works include her 2004 play “Dr. Magic,” her 2008 novel “My Love,” her 2009 short story “Dear Husband” and her 2009 poetry collection “The Coming Storm.”

In her 2007 publication “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates,” she explains her life between 1973 and 1982, giving readers a sense of where her ideas and thoughts originate.

Oates revealed her passion when she said in the journal, “If I wonder where my personality really exists, in what form it best expresses itself, the answer is obvious: in the books. Between hard covers. Hard covers. The rest is Life.”

Cicarelli said she compares Oates to female authors Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf because of their roles in breaking gender barriers.

Oates is also the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.

“When we expect people of her caliber to come, we expect a large turn out,” Ciccarelli said. “She is really among the best.”