Writer, born in New York City, New York, USA. She studied at Hunter College (19389) and New York University, then taught at Columbia and Syracuse universities during the 1960s, and became a teacher at Sarah Lawrence College. Early in her career she was a poet, but she is most noted for her mastery of the short-story form, as in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974) and Later the Same Day (1985). A feminist and peace activist, she lived in New York City and Thetford, VT.
Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 - ) is an American short story writer, poet, and political activist whose work has won a number of awards.
Early life
Grace Paley was born Grace Goodside on December 11, 1922, in the Bronx.
In 1938 and 1939, Paley attended Hunter College, then, briefly New York University, but she never received a degree.
On June 20, 1942, Grace Goodside married Jess Paley, a motion-picture cameraman, and soon after had two children, Nora (1949) and Danny (1951). Though Paley separated from her husband not long after the birth of her children, they would not be legally divorced until her 1972 marriage to landscape architect and author Robert Nichols.
The Little Disturbances of Man
Having spent several years as a typist and housewife, Paley turned her attention back to writing in the mid 1950s. After a number of rejections, Paley published her first collection, The Little Disturbances of Man (1959) with Doubleday.
Though as a story collection by an unknown author, the book was not widely reviewed, those that did review it (including Philip Roth and the The New Yorker book page) tended to rate the stories highly. The book's success allowed Paley to start a teaching career which would eventually include Columbia University, Syracuse, City College of New York, and Sarah Lawrence College;
Political activism
Simultaneous with Paley's burgeoning fiction career, she began what would become a life-long commitment to political activism, particularly anti-militarization efforts.
With the escalation of the Vietnam War, Paley's activism reached a new level. Paley joined the War Resisters League and came to national prominence as an activist when she accompanied a 1969 peace mission to Hanoi to negotiate the release of prisoners of war.
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and later works
Following the success of Little Disturbances of Man, Paley's publisher encouraged her to write a novel. However, after several years of tinkering with drafts, Paley abandoned the project and turned back to short fiction.
Instead, with the aid of friend and neighbor Donald Barthelme, a famous author in his own right, Paley assembled a second collection of fiction in 1974, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. This collection of seventeen stories features several recurring characters from Little Disturbances of Man (most notably the narrator "Faith," but also including Johnny Raferty and his mother), while continuing Paley's exploration of racial, gender, and class issues. The long story "Faith in a Tree," positioned roughly at the center of the collection, brings a number of characters and themes from the stories together on a Saturday afternoon at the park.
Paley continues the stories of Faith and her neighbors in the collection Later the Same Day (1985). Paley's other honors include the Edith Wharton Award (1983), the Rea Award for the Short Story (1993) the Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1993), and the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award for Literary Arts (1994).
Paley currently lives and works in Thetford, Vermont.
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