Piercy's work is rooted in her Jewish heritage, Marxist social and political activism, and feminist ideals.
"[5] An indifferent student in her early childhood, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with the German measles and rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read.
[6] Upon graduation from Mackenzie High School, Piercy became the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan, where she received a B.A.
[1][7] Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France.
The letter may be interpreted to endorse TERF ideology because it defends the right to exclude transgender women from "women-only conferences".
"I can’t understand the anger at trans people and LGBTQ etc in general.... Why shouldn’t someone decide they’ve been assigned the wrong gender?
[1] Piercy is the author of more than seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon Is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999).
She has published fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her current—and third—husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
[17] William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk, as Piercy mentions in an introduction to Body of Glass.
Body of Glass (He, She and It, 1991) itself postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives.
Her World War II historical novel, Gone to Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia.