Celebrated writer and social activist, Grace Paley, died on August 22, 2007. She was 84 years old and was suffering from breast cancer. Even though she published only about forty-eight stories in three volumes, The Little Disturbances of Man”(Doubleday, 1959); Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974); and Later the Same Day (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985), she drew praise from critics for her rich but sparse “pitch-perfect dialogue.” Farrar, Straus & Giroux published her Collected Stories in 1994, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 1980, she was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1989, Governor Mario Cuomo made her the first official New York State Writer. She was the Vermont State Poet Laureate from March 5, 2003 until July 25, 2007.

Ms. Paley attended Hunter College for a year and then studied with Auden at the New School in the hopes of becoming a poet. She taught at Sarah Lawrence and at the City College of New York. She was also a past vice president of the PEN American Center. Her other books include a collection of essays, Just As I Thought (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), and several volumes of poetry, among them Leaning Forward (Granite Press, 1985) and New and Collected Poems (Tilbury Press, 1991). A film, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, based on three stories in the collection and adapted by John Sayles and Susan Rice, was released in 1983.