Acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates loved much of her time as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She loved the city, the water and the student union.
But she has written that her campus years in Wisconsin were in some ways a “lost time” for her. She found much of the older, male-dominated faculty — and their old-school teaching methods — to be dull. And her time featured a turning point that could have led her down a path away from her future accolades, which include a National Book Award, the National Humanities Medal and several Pulitzer Prize nominations.