Video Interview: Joyce Carol Oates on the Profound Loss of Someone Close; Bay Area Reading Schedule

Joyce Carol Oates is in town, and yesterday she appeared on Forum, talking to Michael Krasny about “A Widow’s Story,” her memoir on the shock and grief she felt following the sudden death of her husband, Raymond Smith. (Read Oates’ 2010 New Yorker piece about her husband here.)

Afterward, Ms. Oates, a one-time National Book Award winner and six-time nominee, sat down to talk with us about the profound loss people experience at the death of someone close:

I also asked about her about the place of California in America’s literary life; she said she doesn’t really think of different writers as being associated with different places.

Tomorrow night, April 8, San Mateo’s M is For Mystery bookstore will be hosting a reading by Ms. Oates at the Belmont Library.

On April 28, she’ll appear in conversation with Michael Krasny at the University of San Francisco.

On April 29, she’ll be reading at UC Berkeley’s Doe Library.