running, of which she has written, "Ideally, the runner who's a writer is running through the land- and cityscapes of her fiction, like a ghost in a real setting". While running, Oates mentally envisions scenes in her novels and works out structural problems in already-written drafts; she formulated the germ of her novel You Must Remember This (1987) while running, when she "glanced up and saw the ruins of a railroad bridge", which reminded her of "a mythical upstate New York city in the right place". Oates was a member of the board of trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from 1997 to 2016. She is an honorary member of the Simpson Literary Project, which annually awards the $50,000 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize to a mid-career writer. She has served as the Project's artist-in-residence several times. References External links Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Patchwork (Official Web Site) Joyce Carol Oates Biography and Interview on American Academy of Achievement The Glass Ark: A Joyce Carol Oates Bibliography Ontario Review Papers of Joyce Carol Oates at Syracuse University Interview with the Oxonian Review in June 2010 Joyce Carol Oates Bookworm Interviews (Audio) with Michael Silverblatt Interview October 13, 2015 WNYC Leonard Lopate show Biography at Narrative Magazine 1938 births 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American educators 20th-century American essayists 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American poets 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American women writers 20th-century atheists 20th-century memoirists 20th-century pseudonymous writers 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights 21st-century American educators 21st-century American essayists 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American poets 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American women writers 21st-century atheists 21st-century memoirists 21st-century pseudonymous writers Academics from Michigan Academics from New Jersey Academics from New York (state) American atheism activists American atheists American bibliophiles American critics of Islam American educators American women educators American former Christians American humanists American literary critics American women literary critics American literary theorists American memoirists American people of Hungarian descent American people of Jewish descent American secularists American social commentators American speculative fiction writers American women academics American women dramatists and playwrights American women essayists American women non-fiction writers American women novelists American women poets American women short story writers American writers of young adult literature Critics of religions Critics of the Catholic Church Former Roman Catholics Jerusalem Prize recipients Literacy and society theorists Living people The Magazine