Joyce Carol Oates

In 2008 Joyce Carol Oates lost the husband—Raymond Smith—to whom she’d been married for 48 years. Her recollections of those harrowing early days of widowhood provide a glimpse of Oates as a teacher of writers and as caretaker of the literary magazine she and her husband kept in print for so long.

He wondered what letters of recommendation his teachers were writing for him. What was in the confidential file locked away in the principal's office?

Sunny didn’t tell anyone about the engagement ring. Of all sins, she thought, betrayal is surely the worst