The Dark Lady of American Letters, This Friday

Joyce Carol Oates, a towering figure of contemporary fiction, and a favorite to win the Nobel Prize for a quarter century, and a regular visitor to the New York State Summer Writers Institute, will speak on Friday the 13th of July in Saratoga. 8PM, free and open to the public, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs.

All events in the series are free and open to the general public

Her most recent book is The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares: Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread (2011).

Publishers Weekly said, "The seven stories in this stellar collection from the prolific Oates (Give Me Your Heart) may prompt the reader to turn on all the lights or jump at imagined noises.... This volume burnishes Oates’s reputation as a master of psychological dread."

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Thieves Everywhere!

"Thieves abound in Lagos, and in this book. Every minute, every page is for the thief-- the pickpocket, the dubious petrol station attendant, the murderous armed robber, the compact disc pirate, the hostage-taking area boy, the bribe-taking police, customs and embassy officers, the thieving politician whose actions and inactions account for power failures and fuel scarcities... [all of it written] in prose that is at once precise and haunting, even long after the final word."

In the Guardian (UK), Tolu Ogunlesi reviewed Teju Cole's Every Day is For the Thief (2007), a novella with photographs about life in Lagos, Nigeria. Cole visits tomorrow 2/10.

Picture: Oil pirates clash with oil companies in the Niger delta.

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