“Joyce Carol Oates, a writer known for exploring the margins of society in richly imagined novels shot through with sometimes lurid violence, is the winner of this year’s Chicago Tribune Literary Prize,” a lifetime achievement award. Other Tribune prizewinners this year include Louise Erdich (for her novel, The Painted Drum); Taylor Branch for At Canaan’s Edge, his examination of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement; and children’s book author Kate DiCamillo.