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Joyce Carol Oates: β€˜It was like a strange planet'

Novelist Joyce Carol Oates talks about how she struggled to write her memoir A Widow’s Story which deals with her first few months as a widow. Oates lost her husband of forty-six years, Raymond Smith, suddenly in 2008. He was diagnosed with pneumonia in Princeton Medical Center but in less than a week he died from a hospital-acquired infection. Speaking to Front Row’s Mark Lawson, Oates questions whether writing about a traumatic experience is cathartic.

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