One of The New Yorker's "Books We Loved in 2017" A Grace Paley Reader compiles a selection of Paley's writing across genres, showcasing her breadth of work as well as her extraordinary insight and brilliant economy of words. "A writer like Paley, " writes George Saunders, "comes along and brightens language up again, takes it aside and gives it a pep talk, sends it back renewed, so it can do its job, which is to wake us up. " Best known for her inimitable short stories, Grace Paley was also an enormously talented essayist and poet, as well as a fierce activist. She was a tireless member of the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, the tenants' rights movement, the anti-nuclear-power movement, and the Women's Pentagon Action, among other causes, and proved herself to be a passionate citizen of each of her communities--New York City and rural Vermont.