ZZ Packer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
ZZ Packer
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ZZ Packer at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.
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| Born | Zuwena Packer January 12, 1973 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 2000-present |
Zuwena "ZZ" Packer (born January 12, 1973) is an American writer. She is primarily known for her works of short fiction.
Contents
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. She was recognized as a talented writer at an early age, publishing in 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 Pulitzer Prize-winning 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. |
