Essays, Book Reviews, and Other Nonfiction in Books Other than Collections of Oates's Work:
"Against Nature." Changing the Bully Who Rules the World: Reading and Thinking about Ethics. Ed. Carol Bly. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed, 1996. 48-68.
---. The Nature Reader. Ed. Daniel Halpern and Dan Frank. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1996. 226-236.
---. The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues across the Disciplines. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. New York: McGraw, 1997. 559-565.
---. The Millennium Reader. Ed. Stuart Hirschberg and Terry Hirschberg. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1997. 569-576.
"All the Available Light." All the Available Light.
"An Airy Insubstantial World." The Critical Response to John Cheever. Ed. Francis J. Bosha. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. 145-147.
"The Art of Suicide." Suicide: Right or Wrong? Ed. John Donnelly. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998. 242-246.
"A Change of Light: Triumphant Tales of Obsession." Critical Essays on Julio Cortazar. Ed. Jaime Alazraki. New York: G.K. Hall, 1999. 141-143.
"Cheever's People: The Retreat from Chaos." The Critical Response to John Cheever. Ed. Francis J. Bosha. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. 108-109.
"Confronting Head-On the Face of the Afflicted." The Crisis of Criticism. Ed. Maurice Berger. New York: New P, 1998. 30-40.
"Despair." Deadly Sins. New York: Morrow, 1993. 104-125.
"Dodgson's Golden Hours." Soaring with the Dodo: Essays on Lewis Carroll's Life and Art. Ed. Edward Guiliano and James R. Kincaid. Charlotteville, VA: U of Virginia P, 1982.
"Down the Road." Beat Down to Your Soul: What Was the Beat Generation? Ed. Ann Charters. New York: Penguin, 2001. 415-423.
"Dracula: The Vampire's Secret." The Movie That Changed My Life. Ed. David Rosenberg. New York: Penguin, 1991. 60-75.
"The Dream of the Sacred Text." The Generation of 2000: Contemporary American Poets. Ed. William Heyen. Princeton, NJ: Ontario Review P, 1984. 204-206.
"Excerpt from On Boxing." The Thinking Reader. Ed. James Koobatian. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002. 251-253.
"Excerpts from a Journal." Writers on Writing. Ed. Robert Pack and Jay Parini. Hanover, NH: U P of New England, 1991. 162-174.
"Extenuating Circumstances." The Best of Sisters in Crime. Ed. Marilyn Wallace. New York: Berkley Prime Crime 1997. 276-282.
---. The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States. Ed. Linda Wagner-Martin and Cathy N. Davidson. New York: Oxford U P, 1995. 148-153.
"Facts, Visions, Mysteries: My Father, Frederic Oates." Family Portraits. Ed. Carolyn Anthony. New York: Doubleday, 1990. 151-63.
"Food Mysteries." Not for Bread Alone: Writers on Food, Wine, and the Art of Eating. Ed. Daniel Halpern. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1993. 25-37.
"Frankenstein's Fallen Angel." Afterword. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. West Harfield, CT: Pennyroyal, 1984. 248-249.
---. Excerpted in Classic Horror Writers. Writers of English: Lives and Works. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1994. 133-134.
"Franz Kafka's 'The Penal Colony.'" You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.
"Genesis (Eden) and John." Communion: Contemporary Writers Reveal the Bible in Their Lives. Ed. David Rosenberg. New York: Anchor, 1996. 253-270.
"I Can't Stop Taking Notes." Endangered Species: Writers Talk about Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives. Ed. Lawrence Grobel. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2001. 317-370.
"Imaginary Cities: America." Literature and the Urban Experience: Essays on the City and Literature. Ed. Michael Jaye and Ann Chalmers Watts. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U P, 1981. 11-33.
"'The Immense Indifference of Things': The Tragedy of Conrad's Nostromo." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 9(1975): 5-22. Reprinted In: Contraries. New York: Oxford U P, 1981. 82-115.
"In Defense of Despair: Despair: The One Unforgivable Sin." In Defense of Sin. Ed. John Portmann. New York: Palgrave/St. Martin's, 2001. 283-290.
"Is Laughter Contagious?" Critical Issues in Contemporary Culture. Ed. Christopher Gold and Ele Byington. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. 271-281.
"Letter to a Young Writer." Letters to a Fiction Writer. Ed. Frederick Busch. New York: Norton, 1999. 208-213.
"A Letter to My Mother, Carolina Oates, on Her 78th Birthday, November 8, 1995." The Norton Book of American Autobiography. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Norton, 1999. 509-518.
"The Madness of Art: The Horror Writer and Society." Writing Horror. Ed. Mort Castle. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books, 1997. 6-8.
"Many Are Called . . ." American Poets in 1976. Ed. William Heyen. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs, 1976. 202-211.
"Marsyas Flayed by Apollo." Literature and the Visual Arts. Ed. Mark Rudman. New York: New York U P, 1989. 67.
"The Nature of Short Fiction, or, The Nature of My Short Fiction." [Preface.] Handbook of Short Story Writing. Eds. Frank A. Dickinson and Sandra Smythe. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books, 1970. xi-xviii.
"Negative." Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write about Race. Ed Marita Golden and Susan Richards Shreve. New York: Nan A. Talese, 1995. 60-86.
"New Heaven and Earth." The Conscious Reader. Ed. Caroline Shrodes, Harry Finestone, and Michael Shugrue. New Uork: Macmillan, 1992. 1100-1106.
"Night Driving." Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings. Ed. Jean Lindamood. New York: Atlantic Monthly P, 1996. 183-186.
"Nostalgia, Dream, Memory, Poetry." Night Errands: How Poets Use Dreams. Ed. Roderick Townley. Pittsburgh, PA: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998. 162-169.
"On 'After Apple-Picking' by Robert Frost." First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them. New York: Scribner, 2000. 188-192.
"On Boxing." Boxer: An Anthology of Writings on Boxing and Visual Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1996. 27-34.
---. A Writer's Reader. 8th ed. Ed. Donald Hall and D.L. Emblem. New York: HarperCollins College, 1997. 370-374.
"On Editing The Ontario Review." [With Raymond J. Smith. The Art of Literary Publishing: Editors on Their Craft. Ed. Bill Henderson. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart, 1980. 142-150.
"One Keeps Going." Doris Lessing: Conversations. Ed. Earl G. Ingersoll. Princeton, NJ: Ontario Review P/New York: Braziller, 1994. 33-40.
"The Origins and Art of the Short Story." The Tales We Tell: Perspectives on the short Story. Ed. Barbara Lounsberry, et al. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. 47-52.
"Portrait of the Artist as Son, Lover, Elegist." [Rev. of The Source of Light.] Critical Essays on Reynolds Price. Ed. James A. Schiff. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998. 90-92.
"Postscript to a Personal View of Nabokov." Critical Essays on Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Phyllis A. Roth. Boston: Hall, 1984. 108-109.
"Rape and the Boxing Ring." Critical Issues in Contemporary Culture. Ed. Christopher Gold and Ele Byington. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. 90-102.
"Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman." On Writing Short Stories. Ed. Tom Bailey. New York: Oxford U P, 2000. 13-27.
"The Real Story: Literary Fact and Fiction." [With Charles McGrath, et al.] PEN America: A Journal for Writers and Readers 1(Winter 2000): 115-129.
"Realism of Distance, Realism of Immediacy." Critical Essays on Peter Taylor. Ed. Hubert H. McAlexander. New York: G.K. Hall/ New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993. 45-47.
"Reflections on the Grotesque." Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century Art. Ed. Christoph Grunenberg. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art/Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1997.
"The Short Story." Southern Humanities Review 5(Summer 1971): 213-214. Reprinted in: What Is the Short Story. Eds. Eugene Current-Garcia and Welton R. Patrick. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1974. 138-139.
"Silences by Tillie Olsen." The Critical Response to Tillie Olsen. Ed. Kay Hoyle Nelson and Nancy Huse. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. 245-249. Reprinted From: New Republic 28 July 1978.
"They All Just Went Away." The Best American Essays of the Century. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. Boston: Houghton, 2000.
"Thus BIRTH, of All the B's the Most Profound." Hockney's Alphabet. Ed. David Hockney.
"To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet." Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times New York: Times Books, 2001. 165-171.
"An Unsolved Mystery." Between Friends. Ed. Mickey Pearlman. Boston: Houghton, 1994. 125-128.
"Updike's American Comedies." Modern Fiction Studies 21(Fall 1975): 459-472. Reprinted In: The Profane Art: Essays and Reviews. New York: Dutton, 1983. 95-105.
"Weedy Logic." Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver. Ed. William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra, 1993. 24-25.
"'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?' and Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film." Showalter, Elaine, ed. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U P, 1994. 67-72.
"Where They All Are Sleeping." Critical Essays on Robert Bly. Ed. William V. Davis. New York: G.K. Hall; New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992. 57-59.
"The (Woman) Writer." Faith of a (Woman) Writer. Ed. Alice Kessler-Harris and William McBrien. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988. 5-11.
Unidentified Contributions to:
The King Is Dead.
Poetspeak: In Their Work, about Their Work. Ed. Paul B. Janeczko. Bradbury, 1983.
The Runner's Literary Companion.
Who's Writing This?: Notations on the Authorial I, with Self-Portraits. Ed. Daniel Halpern. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Ecco, 1995.