Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following overview of Paley's "A Conversation with My Father," she focuses on the relationship between life and fiction in the story.

Known as an innovative, "one-of-a-kind" writer, Grace Paley writes stories that are deceptively simple. At first they seem uncomplicated, but a closer reading reveals Paley's careful craftsmanship. She began her writing life as a poet but came to find that she could not express in poetry the ideas that she and her women friends were discussing, so she turned to fiction. Many of her stones center on the specific concerns of women and the roles society places upon them. Paley's stories, while relating everyday matters, always have social or political motives, yet they never moralize. Paley simply presents a world filled with people...