Grace Paley dies at age 84

Grace Paley died Wednesday at the age of 84; she had breast cancer. Obituaries of note at NPR, the NY Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Guardian. There were lots of nice recent pictures of her in the various articles I read, but I just loved this picture of a much younger Paley from 1959.

I first became really aware of Grace Paley (although I had heard of her, and may have read some of her stories in my teens, a voracious reading period for me) through an independent film released in 1983 and based on her stories, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. And Paley was more than just a great writer; she was also a peace activist and a central figure in her community in her New York days, and in her later years she lived in Vermont and continued in political activism right into old age.