Board Members > Next Board Member

Biographical note:

Grace Paley is one of the most beloved of American writers. Born into a family of radical Russian immigrants in the Bronx, she dropped out of college to get married during World War II, then settled in Greenwich Village, had children, and began her dual career of writing and political activism. She published her first book of short stories in 1959, and began to teach creative writing at Sarah Lawrence, where she remained for many years. In 1961, she was a founder of the Greenwich Village Peace Center, which became a nexus of draft resistance during the Vietnam War. At the height of the war,

in 1969, Paley was one of a delegation to North Vietnam to bring back three pilots who had been shot down. Though her acclaim as a writer grew steadily, she remained politically active, opposing nuclear weapons in the Clamshell Alliance and the War Resisters League. In 1980, she helped organize the Women's Pentagon Action, and was active in the anti-nuclear campaigns at Seneca Falls. In 1986, she was honored as the first official state writer of New York. She has also been given awards by the Lannan Foundation, the New York Council for the Arts, and others. Paley is a board member of PEN American Center and was the founding chair of Women's WORLD.

Bibliography:

• The LIttle Disturbances of Man. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959. (stories)
• Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974. (stories)
• 16 Broadsides. St. Paul, MI: Bookslinger, 1980. (poems)
• Goldenrod. Penobscot, ME: Granite Press, 1982. (poems)
• Later the Same Day. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985. (stories)
• Leaning Forward: Poems. Penobscot, ME: Granite Press, 1985.
• Long Walks and Intimate Talks. Illustrated by Vera Williams. New York: Feminist Press, 1991.
• New and Collected Poems. Gardiner: Tilbury House. 1992.
• Collected Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994.
• Just as I Thought. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998. (prose)
• Begin Again: Collected Poems. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2001.