Author Joyce Carol Oates participated in this panel discussion as 2010-2011 Avenali Chair in the Humanities at the Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley. Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize), and the New York Times bestsellers The Falls and The Gravedigger's Daughter. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. Sponsored by the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/