Special Issue: Grace Paley

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We are very pleased to present this special issue of the Journal of the Short Story in English devoted to Grace Paley’s short stories. Paule Lévy, Professor of American literature at the University of Versailles, France, is the guest editor of this issue and has brought together an impressive array of scholars. The articles are sensitively written, and pay homage to an author whose work in the realm of the short story could be qualified as “legendary.” The editorial staff of the Journal are particularly sensitive to the impact of this volume, as we have fond memories of Grace Paley’s visit to Angers in 1998, when she was the guest writer at a conference on Jewish Identity and Otherness in the Modern Short Story, the proceedings of which were edited by the conference organizers: Emmanuel Vernadakis (co-editor of the JSSE at the time) and Jean-Francois Dreyfus, and published in JSSE 32 (1999). While in Angers, Paley was particularly moved by a theatrical reading of “The Loudest Voice,” performed by the San Francisco based theatre company “Word for Word,” and her vibrant spirit was remarked by all in her interview at the conference (also featured in JSSE 32 and reprinted in JSSE 41 in 2003). Grace Paley’s death in 2007 was a sad moment for many friends, critics, and fellow writers. This collection of articles in many ways serves as an additional tribute to an author who has fundamentally affected our perception of what it is possible to do with the short story form. We are grateful to Paule Lévy for her rigorous preparation of a series of articles which celebrate Paley’s writing through nuanced criticism and close textual readings.