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ZZ Packer
ZZ Packer at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.
ZZ Packer at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.
Born Zuwena Packer
(1973-01-12) January 12, 1973 (age 51)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Period 2000-present

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

Early life and education

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

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.

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."

"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.

Packer is currently working on a novel set during Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War: "The subject is the Buffalo Soldiers; blacks who left the South, Louisiana in this case, and traveled to the West. You don't hear much about blacks in the West and I became really fascinated by them. I thought to justify my interest I had better write about them." A short excerpt from the novel was published in The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" issue. She has been regularly contributing to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.

Works

Books

Year Title
2003 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Anthologies

Year Title
2000 Best American Short Stories 2000
2003 Best American Short Stories 2003
2008 New Stories from the South: The Year's Best
2015 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

Other works

Year Title Publication
1999 Brownies Harper's Magazine
2000 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere The New Yorker
2002 The Ant of the Self The New Yorker
2002 Every Tongue Shall Confess Ploughshares
2002 The Stranger The Washington Post Magazine
2004 Derby Pie The New York Times Magazine
2004 An Interview with John Kerry The Believer Magazine
2004 I Was Black, and I Told Her O, The Oprah Magazine
2004 Losing My Religion Salon
2005 'Dr. King's Refrigerator': Thinking Outside the Icebox The New York Times Magazine
2005 Sorry, Not Buying The American Prospect
2007 Buffalo Soldiers Granta
2007 Pita Delicious The Washington Post Magazine
2007 Gideon The Guardian
2007 The Finishing Party: ZZ Packer's Writing Group O, The Oprah Magazine
2008 I want Obama to be daily proof that race is no barrier The Guardian
2008 Saved to ‘Drafts’ Granta
2008 Working the Reunion The New York Times Magazine
2009 No Polenta, No Cry The New York Times Magazine
2009 Remembering Updike: ZZ Packer The New Yorker
2009 A Finished Revolution? The Oxford American
2009 Confessions of a Shopaholic's Wife Glamour
2010 Dayward The New Yorker
2011 Ferraro's Barack Problem HuffPost
2012 Keeping it Weird in Austin, Texas Smithsonian
2013 It's Beyoncé's World and We're Just Living In It Newsweek
2017 Trump Talk: Your Translation Guide The New Yorker
2017 What to Expect When You're Expecting Fascism The New Yorker
2018 News of an ‘Outrage’ Used to Mean Something Very, Very Different The New York Times Magazine
2018 When Is ‘Civility’ a Duty, and When Is It a Trap? The New York Times Magazine
2019 July 30, 1866 The New York Times Magazine
2019 Truth And Fiction Port Magazine
2020 Preacher of the New Antiracist Gospel GQ
2020 Sarah Cooper Doesn't Mimic Trump. She Exposes Him. The New York Times Magazine
2020 The Empty Facts of the Breonna Taylor Decision The New Yorker

Awards

Year Title Notes
1997 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award Winner
1999 Whiting Award Winner
1999 Bellingham Review Award Winner
2003 Commonwealth Club of California Award Winner
2004 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
2004 PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist
2004 Alex Award Winner

Other honors

Year Title
2006 5 under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation
2007 America's Best Young Novelists by Granta
2007 Smithsonian Magazine's Young Innovators
2010 The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers.

Teaching

Year Title
2007 Writer-in-Residence at the Tulane University English Department Creative Writing Program
2008 Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at San Jose State University.
2008 Creative Writing Faculty at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin
2009 Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College
2010 Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program of Creative Writing at Texas State University
2011 Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa
2012 Visiting Assistant Professor in English and Creative Writing at University of Houston
2013 Creative Writing Assistant Professor at SFSU
2015 Creative Writing Visiting Faculty at MIT
2020 Creative Writing Faculty at Harvard University
2020 Creative Writing MFA Program at CUNY's Hunter College
2023 Assistant Professor in the English Department at Vanderbilt University

Fellowships

Year Title
1999 Stegner Fellowship
2002 MacDowell Fellowship
2005 National Endowment for the Arts Grant
2005 Guggenheim Fellowship
2005 Montalvo Arts Center Lucas Artists Fellowship
2007 San Francisco Writers' Grotto Fellowship
2010 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University
2010 MacDowell Fellowship
2013 Dobie Paisano Fellowship
2014 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University
2016 MacDowell Fellowship
2018 W. E. B. Du Bois Institute Fellowship at Harvard University
2018 Montalvo Arts Center Lucas Artists Fellowship
2019 Montalvo Arts Center Lucas Artists Fellowship
2020 Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs Fellowship at Brown University.
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