Imaginative Creativity Its Own Reward

On University of Windsor Letterhead, Department of English, the following:

2 April 1976

Dear Miss Rosenfeld:

Thank you for your very kind letter of March 28.

By all means explore your own capacity for creative expression -- the mere exercise of the imagination, in itself, is vastly rewarding. Being 'published' is a secondary phenomenon. There are many writers, myself among them, who derive most pleasure from simply writing, and who look upon their published books almost as if they were books by other people; of interest, surely, but not a special source of pride or vanity.

Canada has its own writers, of course, and there is no need for the 'literary establishment' to bother with an American. I don't at all feel 'neglected'. I admire many Canadian writers very much and am happy to be living here in Windsor and teaching at the University.

All writers are rejected now and then, for various reasons. Even Nobel Prize winners are occasionally rejected by magazines -- perhaps you didn't know that? Since I have had an agent now for a decade or more, the placing of my stories and books is handled by someone else, and my time is free for writing and teaching.

Again, thank you for your letter, and best wishes.

Sincerely,

(signed)
Joyce Carol Oates