grace paley, rest in peace

The inimitable Grace Paley has died. She was 84.

I saw Paley read and speak many times. She was a wonderful thinker, writer and activist, and from all accounts, a wonderful person. Her New York Times obit is here, and here's an interview with her in Salon from about ten years ago.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

poll: "this brings into very clear light how tenuous the support is for this" war

Canadians have had it with this pointless war in Aghanistan. Canadians' tepid support for the combat mission in Afghanistan would turn icy should the Afghan government proceed with a law allowing marital rape, a new poll suggests. A proposed family law code for Afghanistan's Shia minority would make it illegal for women to refuse to have sex with their husbands, and would require that they get approval from a male relative to leave the house. A survey by The Canadian Press/Harris-Decima suggests 40 per cent of Canadians support the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan. But should the family law code be enacted, the poll suggests opposition to the mission would rise to roughly 75 per cent. Jeff Walker, senior vice-president of Harris-Decima, said that at that level of opposition, it would be difficult for the Harper government to maintain its commitment to keep combat troops in Afghanistan until 2011. "This brings into very clear light exactly how tenuous the support i...
Read more

what i'm (also) reading: tween lit

Part of my assignment for the new Kids On Wheels magazine is writing serial fiction. I haven't written fiction in many years, and when I did, it was for teenagers; the KOW audience is 8-12 years old. I'm quietly freaking out, wondering how on earth I'm going to meet this challenge. I know I'll come up with something, but will it be anything anyone would ever want to read? To start my mind working along age-appropriate lines, I've been re-familiarizing myself with classic books for the reading level. I chose five: The Phantom Tollboth by Norton Juster, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle (one of my favorites when I was that age), the incomparable Harriet The Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, From The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg, and the modern classic Holes by Louis Sachar. Everyone should read Holes , it is brilliant. It was also make into an excellent movie, with a screenplay written, thank goodness, by the author. All this r...
Read more