There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.

Together the couple founded The Ontario Review a literary magazine in 1974 on which Oates served as associate editor. Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16 1938) is an American author.

Oates publiJoyce Carol Oatesd her first book in 1963 and has since publiJoyce Carol Oatesd over forty novels as well as a number of plays and novellas and many volumes of short stories poetry and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing including the National Book Award for her novel them (1969) two O. Henry Awards and the National Humanities Medal.