Awards for Individual Works
American Academy of Arts and Letters, Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award
American Theatre Critics Association, New Play Award
Prix Bel Ami
Boston Book Review, Fisk Fiction Prize
Bram Stoker Award
Deauville American Film Festival: Lucien Barrière Literary Award
Prix Femina
Heidemann Award for One-Act Plays
- 1990 Co-winner: "Tone Clusters"
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Grand prix de l'héroïne Madame Figaro
Mademoiselle College Fiction Contest
- 1959, winner: "In the Old World"
Mystery Readers International Macavity Awards: Sue Feder Memorial, Best Historical Mystery
National Book Award
National Book Critics Circle Award
National Magazine Awards
- 2007 nominee: Fiction, Playboy (May 2006), "Suicide Watch"
- 2006 winner: Fiction, The Virginia Quarterly Review (Fall), "Smother"
- 2006 finalist: Fiction, The Virginia Quarterly Review (Winter), "So Help Me God"
- 2006 finalist: Fiction, Zoetrope: All-Story, "High Lonesome"
- 2003 finalist: Fiction, The Georgia Review, "Three Girls"
- 2002 finalist: Fiction, Harper's Magazine, "Curly Red"
- 1993 finalist: Fiction, Playboy, "The Premonition"
- 1985 finalist: Fiction, Esquire, "Raven's Wing"
- 1983 finalist: Fiction, Esquire, "Ich Bin Ein Berliner"
- 1978 finalist: Fiction, Mademoiselle, "The Tattoo"
New York Times Notable Books of the Year
Oprah's Book Club
Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction
PEN / Faulkner Award
Pulitzer Prize
Shirley Jackson Awards
World Fantasy Awards
Works In Award Anthologies
The Best American Essays
- 2000: "They All Just Went Away" : (The Best American Essays of the Century)
- 1999: "After Amnesia"
- 1996: "They All Just Went Away"
- 1986: "On Boxing"
The Best American Mystery Stories
- 2009: "Dear Husband,"
- 2008: "The Blind Man's Sighted Daughters"
- 2007: "Meadowlands"
- 2006: "So Help Me God"
- 2004: "Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi"
- 2003: "The Skull"
- 2002: "High School Sweetheart"
- 2001: "The Girl with the Blackened Eye"
- 1999: "Secret, Silent"
- 1998: "Faithless"
- 1997: "Will You Always Love Me?"
The Best American Nonrequired Reading
- 2011: "A Hole in the Head"
The Best American Poetry
- 1991: "Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942"
The Best American Short Plays
- 2001-2002: When I Was a Little Girl and My Mother Didn't Want Me
- 1993-1994: The Interview
- 1991-1992: Tone Clusters
The Best American Short Stories
- 2011: "I.D."
- 2005: "The Cousins"
- 1996: "Ghost Girls"
- 1992: "Is Laughter Contagious?"
- 1991: "American, Abroad"
- 1985: "Raven's Wing"
- 1984: "Nairobi"
- 1982: "Theft"
- 1981: "Presque Isle"
- 1978: "The Translation"
- 1977: "Gay"
- 1973: "Silkie"
- 1970: "How I Contemplated the World From the Detroit House of Correction, and Began My Life Over Again"
- 1969: "By the River"
- 1967: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (This volume dedicated to Joyce Carol Oates)
- 1965: "First Views of the Enemy"
- 1964: "Upon the Sweeping Flood"
- 1963: "The Fine White Mist of Winter
The Best Little Magazine Fiction
- 1971: "Through the Looking Glass"
- 1970: "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters"
Best Mystery and Suspense Stories
Horror: The Best of the Year
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
- 15th (2004): "The Haunting"
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
- Twenty-first Annual Collection, 2008: "Valentine, July Heat Wave"
- Twentieth Annual Collection, 2007: "Landfill"
- Eighteenth Annual Collection, 2005: "Stripping"
- Eleventh Annual Collection, 1998: "The Sky-Blue Ball"
- Ninth Annual Collection, 1996: "
"
- Eighth Annual Collection, 1995: "Brothers"
- Sixth Annual Collection, 1993: "Martyrdom"
- Fourth Annual Collection, 1991: "Ladies and Gentlemen:"
- Third Annual Collection, 1990: "Family"
- First Annual Collection, 1988: "Haunted"
Prize Stories: The O Henry Awards
- 2001: "The Girl with the Blackened Eye"
- 1996: "Mark of Satan"
- 1995: "You Petted Me, and I Followed You Home"
- 1993: "Goose-Girl"
- 1992: "Why Don't You Come Live With Me It's Time"
- 1991: "The Swimmers"
- 1990: "Heat"
- 1989: 2nd Prize: "House Hunting"
- 1988: "Yarrow"
- 1987: "Ancient Airs, Voices"
- 1986: Special Award For Continuing Achievement: "Master Race"
- 1985: "The Seasons"
- 1983: 2nd Prize: "My Warszawa"
- 1982: "The Man Whom Women Adored"
- 1981: "Mutilated Woman"
- 1979: "In the Autumn of the Year"
- 1978: "The Tattoo"
- 1976: "Blood-Swollen Landscape"
- 1973: 1st Prize: "The Dead"
- 1972: 2nd Prize: "Saul Bird Says: Relate! Communicate! Liberate!"
- 1971: "The Children"
- 1970: Special Award For Continuing Achievement: "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters" and
"How I Contemplated the World From the Detroit House of Correction, and Began My Life Over Again"
"It is a great pleasure to announce that the publishers of the series have established this year a new prize in connection with it: a Special Award for continuing achievement by a writer of established reputation. The award will be made at the discretion of the editor at such times as seem appropriate; and I am very pleased that it should be given for the first time to Joyce Carol Oates, a gifted writer whose achievements and reputation are a part of the history of the American short story in the 1960s." —William Abrahams
- 1969: 2nd Prize: "Accomplished Desires"
- 1968: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
- 1967: 1st Prize: "In the Region of Ice"
- 1965: "First Views of the Enemy"
- 1964: "Stigmata"
- 1963: "The Fine White Mist of Winter"
The Pushcart Prize
- XXXII: "Nowhere" (fiction)
- XXVIII: "Three Girls" (fiction)
- XXVII: "The Instructor" (fiction)
- XXV: "The Sharpshooter" (fiction)
- XXIII: "Faithless" (fiction)
- XX: "The Undesirable Table" (fiction)
- XVI: "The Hair" (fiction)
- XIV: "Party" (fiction)
- XII: "Against Nature" (nonfiction)
- VIII: "Notes on Failure" (nonfiction)
- VII: "Detente" (fiction)
- I: "The Halucination" (fiction)
