Joyce Carol Oates - On Writing Characters

Critically acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates discusses how a writer develops realistic characters, using examples from her novel "The Gravedigger's Daughter."

A family desperate to escape Nazi Germany settles in upstate New York, where the father is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger an cemetery caretaker. What follows is a tale of unspeakable tragedy, as the gravedigger's daughter begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of ingenious self-invention and bittersweet triumph - Book Passage

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American author and the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University, where she has taught since 1978.

She serves as associate editor for the Ontario Review, a literary magazine, and the Ontario Review Press, a literary book publisher, both of which are edited by her husband, Raymond J. Smith.

Oates has also written under the pseudonyms "Rosamond Smith" and "Lauren Kelly."