Joyce Carol Oates and her book ‘Blonde’

Famous gloomy author Joyce Carol Oates holds up a copy of her book Blonde while attending the 36th annual Deauville American Film Festival on September 9, 2010. This was in Deauville, France (natch). The novel is a sort of fantastical memoir based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. It's not entirely clear, from this distance, why she was presenting a book at the Deauville Film Festival, although maybe it was just because of the Marilyn Monroe angle. Years later, in 2022, director Andrew Dominik made a film, Blonde, based on the book. It starred Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe.

(Update: We have just discovered that Joyce Carol Oates won the Lucien Barrière Literary Award at Deauville that year. The award is given every year during the Deauville Festival to an American author for a movie-related book.)