A Grace Paley Reader
Edited by Kevin Bowen and Nora Paley, this volume brings together the essential work of Grace Paley in one place. It draws from her three story collections, alongside selected essays and poems, showcasing the voice she sharpened across decades on the page and in activism. Paley's New York is full of mothers, neighbors, lovers, and complainers, all rendered with humor and a fierce ear for speech. Her essays touch on writing, peace work, feminism, and family, while her poems are spare and direct. Readers new to her find a strong introduction; longtime readers gain a useful single shelf of favorites. The book honors a writer who treated everyday talk as serious literature and made room for women's lives at the center of the American story.
What you might want to know about A Grace Paley Reader
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A career-spanning gathering of stories, essays, and poems from one of America's most beloved short-form writers.
No. The reader works as a standalone introduction and pulls highlights from all three of her story collections.
It mixes short stories, essays, and poems, plus a brief biographical introduction.
A Grace Paley Reader was written by Grace Paley, published in 2017 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A Grace Paley Reader is 371 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, A Grace Paley Reader takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
A Grace Paley Reader is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
