Poet, short story writer and self-described "combative pacifist" Grace Paley has died. She was 84.

Her husband, playwright Robert Nichols, says Paley died in her Vermont home. She had battled breast cancer.

Over a half century of writing, Paley never wrote a full length novel. Instead, she released a handful of books filled with short stories and poems. She published "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute" in 1974 and "Later the Same Day" in 1985.

Paley joined the War Resisters League in the '60s and visited Hanoi on a peace mission. She was arrested in 1978 during an anti-nuclear protest on the White House lawn. And for years, she spent her Saturdays standing on a New York street corner passing out protest leaflets.

The longtime New Yorker moved to Vermont in 1988 and became the state poet laureate in early 2003.