ZZ Packer

Last updated
ZZ Packer
Zz packer 2009.jpg
ZZ Packer at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.
BornZuwena Packer
(1973-01-12) January 12, 1973 (age 51)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Period2000-present

Zuwena "ZZ" Packer (born January 12, 1973) is an American writer, primarily of works of short fiction.

Contents

Early life and education

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Packer grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, [1] [2] and Louisville, Kentucky. "ZZ" was a childhood nickname; her given name is Zuwena. [3] Her writing was published in the magazine Seventeen at the age of 19. [3] Packer is a 1990 graduate of Seneca High School in Louisville, Kentucky. [4]

Packer attended Yale University, receiving her BA in 1994. Her graduate work included an MA at Johns Hopkins University in 1995 and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa in 1999, where she was mentored by James Alan McPherson. [5]

Career

Her work was first published in the Debut Fiction issue of The New Yorker in 2000. Her short story in the issue became the title story in her collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere . As Publishers Weekly put it, "this debut short story collection is getting the highest of accolades from the New York Times , Harper's , the New Yorker and most every other branch of the literary criticism tree." [6]

"ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is taught in creative writing courses nationwide and with good reason. This short story collection is brimming with characters who are striving to find themselves, to understand themselves, and to survive", commented novelist Colson Whitehead. [7]

In an interview when Packer was a Radcliffe Fellow, in 2015, she reported that she working on a novel set during Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War. [8] The novel-in-progress, The Thousands, "chronicles the lives of black, white, and Native American families shortly after the Civil War, through Reconstruction and the Indian Campaigns in the Southwest". [9] She has been regularly contributing to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker .

Works

Books

YearTitle
2003 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Anthologies

YearTitle
2000 Best American Short Stories 2000 [10]
2003Best American Short Stories 2003 [11]
2008New Stories from the South: The Year's Best [12]
2015100 Years of the Best American Short Stories [13]

Other works

YearTitlePublication
1999BrowniesHarper's Magazine [14]
2000Drinking Coffee ElsewhereThe New Yorker [15]
2002The Ant of the SelfThe New Yorker [16]
2002Every Tongue Shall ConfessPloughshares [17]
2002The StrangerThe Washington Post Magazine [18]
2004Derby PieThe New York Times Magazine [19]
2004An Interview with John KerryThe Believer Magazine [20]
2004I Was Black, and I Told HerO, The Oprah Magazine [21]
2004Losing My ReligionSalon [22]
2005'Dr. King's Refrigerator': Thinking Outside the IceboxThe New York Times Magazine [23]
2005Sorry, Not BuyingThe American Prospect [24]
2007Buffalo SoldiersGranta [25]
2007Pita DeliciousThe Washington Post Magazine [26]
2007GideonThe Guardian [27]
2007The Finishing Party: ZZ Packer's Writing GroupO, The Oprah Magazine [28]
2008I want Obama to be daily proof that race is no barrierThe Guardian
2008Saved to ‘Drafts’Granta [29]
2008Working the ReunionThe New York Times Magazine [30]
2009No Polenta, No CryThe New York Times Magazine [31]
2009Remembering Updike: ZZ PackerThe New Yorker [32]
2009A Finished Revolution?The Oxford American [33]
2009Confessions of a Shopaholic's WifeGlamour [34]
2010DaywardThe New Yorker [35]
2011Ferraro's Barack ProblemHuffPost [36]
2012Keeping it Weird in Austin, TexasSmithsonian [37]
2013It's Beyoncé's World and We're Just Living In ItNewsweek [38]
2017Trump Talk: Your Translation GuideThe New Yorker [39]
2017What to Expect When You're Expecting FascismThe New Yorker [40]
2018News of an ‘Outrage’ Used to Mean Something Very, Very DifferentThe New York Times Magazine [41]
2018When Is ‘Civility’ a Duty, and When Is It a Trap?The New York Times Magazine [42]
2019July 30, 1866The New York Times Magazine [43]
2019Truth And FictionPort Magazine [44]
2020Preacher of the New Antiracist GospelGQ [45]
2020Sarah Cooper Doesn't Mimic Trump. She Exposes Him.The New York Times Magazine [46]
2020The Empty Facts of the Breonna Taylor DecisionThe New Yorker [47]

Awards

YearTitleNotes
1997 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award Winner
1999 Whiting Award [48] Winner
1999 Bellingham Review Award Winner
2003 Commonwealth Club of California Award [49] Winner
2004 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
2004 PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist
2004 Alex Award [50] Winner

Other honors

YearTitle
20065 under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation [51]
2007America's Best Young Novelists by Granta [52]
2007 Smithsonian Magazine's Young Innovators [53]
2010 The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers. [54]

Teaching

YearTitle
2007Writer-in-Residence at the Tulane University English Department Creative Writing Program [55]
2008Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at San Jose State University. [56]
2008Creative Writing Faculty at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin [57]
2009Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College [58]
2010Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program of Creative Writing at Texas State University
2011 Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa [59]
2012Visiting Assistant Professor in English and Creative Writing at University of Houston [60]
2013Creative Writing Assistant Professor at SFSU [61]
2015Creative Writing Visiting Faculty at MIT [62]
2020Creative Writing Faculty at Harvard University
2020Creative Writing MFA Program at CUNY's Hunter College [63]
2023Assistant Professor in the English Department at Vanderbilt University [64]

Fellowships

YearTitle
1999 Stegner Fellowship [65]
2002MacDowell Fellowship [66]
2005 National Endowment for the Arts Grant
2005 Guggenheim Fellowship
2005 Montalvo Arts Center Lucas Artists Fellowship [67]
2007San Francisco Writers' Grotto Fellowship [68]
2010Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University [69]
2010MacDowell Fellowship [66]
2013Dobie Paisano Fellowship [1]
2014 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University [70]
2016MacDowell Fellowship [66]
2018 W. E. B. Du Bois Institute Fellowship at Harvard University [71]
2018Montalvo Arts Center Lucas Artists Fellowship [67]
2019Montalvo Arts Center Lucas Artists Fellowship [67]
2020 Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs Fellowship at Brown University. [72]

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