CHRONOLOGY

1906	Isaac Goodside and Manya Ridnyik immigrate to the Bronx, New York, from the Ukraine.
1906	Birth of Isaac and Manya’s son, Victor.
1908	Birth of Isaac and Manya’s daughter Jeanne.
1922	December 11, birth of Grace Paley, third child of Isaac and Manya.
1938	Grace Paley drops out of high school, attends classes at Hunter, City College, and Merchants and Bankers Business and Secretarial School.
1940	Enrolls in W. H. Auden’s poetry class at The New School for Social Research. Encouraged by Auden to write in her own voice, she publishes poems in school paper.
1942	Marries filmmaker and photographer Jess Paley, lives with him near Army camps in the South and Midwest. Publishes poems in Experience.
1944	Moves into Greenwich Village. Manya Ridnik Goodside dies of breast cancer.
1949	Birth of daughter, Nora.
1951	Birth of son, Danny.
1956	First short story, “Goodbye and Good Luck,” published in Accent. Joins other mothers in blocking buses passing through Washington Square.
1958	“The Contest” published in Accent.
1959	The Little Disturbances of Man published by Doubleday. Joins in organizing antinuclear protests and with protests against air-raid drills in schools.
1961	With John W. Darr, Mary Gandall, Sybl Clairborne, Karl Bissinger, Erika Weihs, Robert Nichols, Judith Malina, Theodore Willentz, David McReynolds, and other neighbors founds The Greenwich Village Peace Center. Protests against atomic testing, civil defense drills with PTA members from PS 41. With Eva Kollich and Sybl Clairborne begins five o’clock protests before draft board. Publishes “Faith in the Afternoon” in Noble Savage. At suggestion of Otto Nathan, executor of the estate of physicist Albert Einstein, organizes one of the first teach-ins on Vietnam, with performances around the city of music, stories, and history of Vietnam. Women Strike for Peace founded. Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction Writing.
1963	Begins lifelong friendship with Peter and Elka Schuman and the Bread and Puppet Theater.
1965	Begins works as instructor in general studies at Columbia.
1966	Arrested in New York City on Armed Forces Day for civil disobedience, sentenced to six days in prison. Begins teaching creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
1967	With Artists and Writers Against the Vietnam War and Greenwich Village Peace Center helps organize Angry Arts Week. Over 250 artists and writers perform from trucks and in venues across the city of New York. With Karl Bissinger and Paul Goodman founds Support in Action, organizing the public burning of over 1,500 draft cards on the Sheep Meadow in Central Park on April 15. Joins Muriel Ruckeyser, June Jordan, Kenneth Koch, Herbert Kohl, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Anne Sexton, and others in founding Teachers and Writers Collaborative. Writes Teachers and Writers Collaborative “Manifesto.” Separates from Jess Paley. Publishes “Distance” in The Atlantic. “Faith in a Tree” published in New American Review.
1968	Travels with writers and clergy to France and Sweden to meet with young men who have left the country in opposition to the draft. Publishes “Two Stories from Five Boroughs” in Esquire.
1969	Travels to North Vietnam with small delegation of peace activists to receive three U.S. prisoners of war. “Distances” is awarded O’Henry Award.
1970	Award from National Institute for Arts and Letters for short stories.
1971	Publishes “A Conversation with My Father” in New American Review. “Two Stories: I. ‘Debts,’ II. ‘Wants’” published in The Atlantic.
1972	Marries writer, landscape architect, and urban planning activist Bob Nichols at Judson Church. “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” published in The Atlantic.
1973	Death of Isaac Goodside. Attends World Peace Congress in Moscow as representative of War Resisters League.
1974	Travels with Bob Nichols and small group to China under the sponsorship of The Guardian. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute published by Doubleday. “The Long Distance Runner” published in Esquire.
1975	Travels to Paris as representative of War Resisters League to meet with Vietnamese delegation at peace negotiations.
1977	Attends First National Women’s Year Conference in Houston.
1978	Arrested in antinuclear demonstration on White House lawn, receives six-month suspended sentence. Publishes “Somewhere Else” in The New Yorker.
1979	Cofounds Woman and Life on Earth. Drafts “Women and Life on Earth Unity Statement.” Arrested for unfurling banner against nuclear energy on White House lawn. October, participates in Clamshell Alliance’s “Take it to Wall St.” action against nuclear power and weapons. Publishes “Friends” and “Love” in The New Yorker.
1980	Attends spring ecofeminist conference “Women and Life on Earth” at Amherst College. Works organizing November 17 Women’s Pentagon Action in Washington, D.C. Arrested with 140 other women. Writes “Women’s Pentagon Action Unity Statement.”
1981	Second Women’s Pentagon Action, Washington, D.C.
1982	Publishes “The Story Hearer” in Mother Jones. Special Issue of Delta dedicated to Grace Paley.
1983	July, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice held outside Romulus Army Base, Seneca Falls, New York. Begins teaching at City College. Stories adapted by John Sayles filmed as Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.
1985	Later the Same Day published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Leaning Forward, a poetry collection, published by Granite Press. Travels to El Salvador and Nicaragua under sponsorship of MADRE, a group of North and Central American women opposed to U.S. policy in Central America.
1985	PEN/Faulkner Prize for Later the Same Day.
1986	Receives Edith Wharton Citation of Merit from New York State Writers Institute, becomes first State Author of New York. Arrested at sit-in at Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire.
1987	Receives Senior Fellowship from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts for “major contribution to American Literature over a lifetime of lifetime of creative endeavor.” Special dinner honoring her work held by The War Resisters League. Travels to Israel to International Conference of Women Writers, cofounds the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
1988	Retires from Sarah Lawrence.
1989	365 Reasons Not to Have Another War, a calendar for The War Resisters League, published.
1991	Long Walks and Intimate Talks, a collection of essays and poems with artwork by Vera Williams, published by Feminist Press.
1992	New and Collected Poems published by Tisbury House. Receives Rea Award for the Short Story.
1994	The Collected Stories published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, receives National Book Award. Receives Pen/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Begins teaching at William Joiner Center Summer Writers’ Workshop.
1996	Travels to Vietnam with delegation from William Joiner Center to meet with Vietnamese writers and publishers.
1998	Just As I Thought, essays, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
2000	Begin Again: Collected Poems published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
2003	Named Vermont State Poet Laureate. Receives Robert Creeley Award for Poetry.
2006	Receives Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Risk Taker Award from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
2007	Grace Paley passes away at home in Thetford, Vermont, from breast cancer. Here and Somewhere Else, with Bob Nichols, published by Feminist Press.
2008	Fidelity published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Massachusetts Review publishes special issue on Grace Paley.