The Joyce Carol Oates Prize annually honors a mid-career fiction writer who has earned a distinguished reputation and the approbation and gratitude of readers. This prize is awarded not in recognition of a book, but for an author: an already emerged and still emerging author of national consequence—short stories and/or novels—at the relatively middle stage of a burgeoning career. By mid-career, we mean an author who has published at least two notable books of fiction and who has yet to receive capstone recognition such as a Pulitzer or a MacArthur. Otherwise, there are no age, geographic, or stylistic restrictions.