A Tribute To Grace Paley, Vermont Poet Laureate and NWU member

On Wednesday, August 22nd, Grace Paley died at her home in Thetford, Vermont
after a long battle with breast cancer. Grace, one of the country's outstanding short story writers and poets, was also a human rights activist and strong supporter of the labor movement and writers' rights. Small wonder that she happily served as an NWU Advisory Board member and spoke on several occasions at our Vermont chapter's annual meeting.

Last year, we asked if she would agree to our establishing a Grace Paley Fund for Vermont Writers. With the kindness, warmth and genuine enthusiasm she always showed to other writers, she graciously accepted -- even while admitting that she was somewhat embarrassed! She never let her designation as Vermont's poet laureate to go to her head. As she met with Vermonters all over the state -- in libraries, schools, and social gatherings, she was down to earth and modest to the end.

You can find more about the Grace Paley Fund here. Although the NWU administers the fund, it is open to applications from all low income Vermont writers who need some financial assistance for their writing projects.

Obituaries in The New York Times and The Washington Post are fitting tributes to Grace's creative skills. (Additional obituaries can be found, among others, at Democracy Now and maudnewton.com; Grace's last major interview was with the Los Angeles Times in June.)

We will miss Grace terribly, and offer the Union's sincerest condolences to her husband Bob Nichols and her family.

John Caruso Wins a Prize

My friend John, who lives and writes in the midst of his amazing gardens-in-progress in Braintree, won Amazon's short-story contest this summer. The prize includes making his story, "The Art of Finding", available for purchase on amazon.com (for a nifty 49 cents). At that price everyone can read it. It's an excellent piece of work, and I feel only a twinge of envy. (The reviews are also uniformly positive, even if I do wonder a bit whether some of the reviewers read the same story I did.)


Better yet, John gets a shade under 20 cents for every copy of the story that people download. That's not much less than some publishers offer for a whole paperback novel. (When the contract first came in, John was a little scared, because it uses words like "exclusive" and "perpetuity" and phrases like "all media." Some of his fellow NWU-VT members kicked the text around for a while and decided that it really wasn't so bad -- although Amazon keeps the right to sell the story on its site indefinitely, John can sell rights to other publishers after the story has been at Amazon for six months.)

It's events like this that occasionally restore my faith in the business of writing. Even today a good writer without a large body of published work can win a contest, make some money, and impress other writers. Now if only someone who's impressed by "The Art of Finding" wants to publish a really big first novel...

The Grace Paley Fund for Vermont Writers

Being a writer anywhere is a lousy way to get rich. Being a writer in Vermont -- where local publications offer frugal payment, and doing national work often requires expensive travel -- is just that much harder. Even writers who take second or third jobs to support their creative vocation can find it more difficult to support themselves here.

The Grace Paley Fund, created under the auspices of the National Writers Union Vermont chapter, is intended to make the writing life a little easier for low-income writers in the state. Small grants for travel, photocopying, educational and other expenses will make it possible for writers to complete projects that could otherwise be just beyond their reach. (Consider, for example, the cost of a dozen or more copies --now required by most literary agents before they'll represent a book-- of a manuscript that might run to 400 pages or more.) Removing such barriers to participation in the marketplace of ideas will ultimately benefit us all.

For more information about applying for a grant from the fund, or about making a tax-deductible contribution, please send email to paleyfund@nwu-vt.org .