Joyce Carol Oates is an award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, short stories, plays, and novellas. She is the 2019 recipient of the $10,000 Jerusalem Prize, given to "international writers whose body of work assert the freedom of the individual in society." She is also a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, among other major awards.
Emily Durante has been narrating audiobooks for over ten years and is also an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning audiobook director. She has been acting since the age of seven and has performed in a number of stage productions at the professional, collegiate, and regional levels.