February 4-6, 2005
“The languages I heard as a child still reside in me. All language has music,” said Grace Paley, whose fiction, carefully refined over months of work, is deceptively casual. She speaks each sentence out loud while working, until her writing has a declarative elegance all its own. Called “one of the best writers alive” by Newsweek’s Walter Clemons, the possibility of hope permeates all her stories.
An extraordinarily creative person, Grace is interested in all aspects of life. A self-described “combative pacifist,” she is a lifelong member of the War Resisters’ League, visited Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and has been arrested for civil disobedience many times in many places.
She’s a gifted teacher. Her workshop will focus on creative writing, storytelling, poetry, and peacemaking. This workshop —for experienced as well as beginning writers—is a rare opportunity to discuss the beauty of language and our characters’ needs to make their own path in life. We’ll write together and alone, listen to each other’s work, and learn about the craft of writing from one of America’s finest writers. Her previous retreats here have been profound and deeply moving and we’re honored and delighted she is returning. We hope you’ll join us.
“Grace Paley is that rare kind of writer, a natural with a voice like no one else’s: funny, sad, lean, modest, energetic, acute. Like the great modern Russian writers she demonstrates a possible unity of the art of consciousness and the naturalness of conscience.” —Susan Sontag
Grace Paley’s heartfelt, beautifully crafted stories about normal and very real people include The Little Disturbances of Man: Stories about Men and Women at Love, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Later the Same Day, Long Walks and Intimate Talks, Just As I Thought, and Grace Paley: The Collected Stories. She’s taught at Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, Dartmouth, and City College NY and has headed the Women’s Committee at PEN. Born in the Bronx in 1922, the daughter of Russian immigrants, Paley’s short stories are marked by her heritage, her politics, and by the small joys and tragedies of the individuals and the family. Asked why she’s never written a novel, she said, “Art is too long and life is too short.”