Writing influenced
by Paley.

Grace Paley wrote political fiction that did not feel like political fiction. This is the hardest thing.

The political & the personal · New York voices · Women's lives as subject

Grace Paley is the most underrated writer in the Tumbleweed Words tradition — underrated partly because she is a woman, partly because her work is concerned with women's lives and domestic experience, which the critical tradition has historically treated as minor subjects. She is not a minor writer. Her short stories are among the most formally inventive in the American tradition, and her ability to carry political weight without the fiction becoming didactic is something no other writer in this tradition matches.

"Paley's characters say what they mean, which in fiction is more unusual than it sounds. Most fictional characters talk around what they mean. Paley's characters are too busy to do that."

David — Tumbleweed Words — on Paley

Paley's lesson is about the political and the personal existing in the same sentence without one overwhelming the other. Her stories are about Vietnam, about nuclear weapons, about the civil rights movement — and they are also about women raising children alone in New York apartments, about a father's relationship with his grown daughter, about the specific dynamics of a neighbourhood street. Both are fully present. Neither reduces the other.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry in the minimalist tradition. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine. Pushcart-nominated. Read the newsletter.