ZZ Packer

---

title: "ZZ Packer" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["21st-century-american-novelists", "african-american-novelists", "american-women-short-story-writers", "pseudonymous-women-writers", "american-historical-novelists", "johns-hopkins-university-alumni", "writers-from-louisville,-kentucky", "writers-from-atlanta", "university-of-iowa-alumni", "yale-university-alumni", "1973-births", "living-people", "baltimore-city-college-faculty", "iowa-writers'-workshop-faculty", "iowa-writers'-workshop-alumni", "people-from-pacifica,-california", "writers-from-chicago", "radcliffe-fellows", "21st-century-american-women-novelists", "rona-jaffe-foundation-writers'-award-winners", "seneca-high-school-(louisville,-kentucky)-alumni", "21st-century-american-short-story-writers", "pen/faulkner-award-for-fiction-winners", "novelists-from-california", "novelists-from-kentucky", "novelists-from-illinois", "novelists-from-iowa", "novelists-from-georgia-(u.s.-state)", "stegner-fellows", "21st-century-pseudonymous-writers", "21st-century-african-american-women-writers", "21st-century-african-american-writers", "20th-century-african-american-writers", "african-american-women-novelists"] description: "American writer" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZ_Packer" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American writer ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox writer "]

Field	Value
image	Zz packer 2009.jpg
imagesize	200px
name	ZZ Packer
caption	ZZ Packer at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.
birth_name	Zuwena Packer
birth_date
birth_place	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
period	2000-present
::

| image = Zz packer 2009.jpg | imagesize = 200px | name = ZZ Packer | caption =ZZ Packer at the 2009 Texas Book Festival. | pseudonym = | birth_name = Zuwena Packer | birth_date = | birth_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = | occupation = | period = 2000-present | genre = | subject = | movement = | influenced = | signature = | website = Zuwena "ZZ" Packer (born January 12, 1973) is an American writer, primarily of works of short fiction, and teacher. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her book Drinking Coffee Elsewhere won the Commonwealth First Fiction Award and an ALEX award. It became a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award and was selected for the Today Show Book Club by John Updike.

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. Packer enjoyed reading from a young age, visiting the local library daily with her mother in Atlanta. 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 and Marilynne Robinson.

Writing 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.

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. 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". She has been regularly contributing to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.

Teaching and fellowships

Packer has held teaching posts at Stanford University, where she was a Jones Lecturer, the Michener Center at the University of Texas, Vassar College, and San Francisco University. As of 2025, she is Assistant Professor of English at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University and teaches Advanced Narrative Techniques on the American Short Fiction MFA for All.

She has been the recipient of a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, a Hutchings Fellowship at Harvard University, a Knafel Fellowship at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and a Whiting Writers Award.

Works

Books

::data[format=table title=""]

Year	Title
2003	Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
::

Anthologies

::data[format=table title=""]

Year	Title
2000	Best American Short Stories 2000
2003	Best American Short Stories 2003
2008	url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121015211711/http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/zz-packers-edition-of-southern-stories-straddles-old-and-new-dixie/Content?oid=1210382
2015	100 Years of the Best American Short Stories
::

Other works

::data[format=table title=""]

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

::data[format=table title=""]

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

::data[format=table title=""]

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.
::

References

References

1. "2004 Alex Awards {{!}} Young Adult Library Services Association".
2. "ZZ Packer {{!}} Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs".
3. "Previous Fellows {{!}} Dobie Paisano Fellowship {{!}} The University of Texas at Austin".
4. "ZZ Packer reading kicks off renowned authors series {{!}} Emory University {{!}} Atlanta GA".
5. Birnbaum, Robert. (2003-04-29). "ZZ Packer - Identity Theory".
6. (2004). "Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields". Gale.
7. (2020). "The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature". Oxford University Press.
8. (2023-04-05). "Member Bonus: ZZ Packer on the Life and Work of James Alan McPherson".
9. "ZZ Packer".
10. [http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?z=y&ean=9781573223782&displayonly=REV#REV "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"], Barnes & Noble.
11. "10 Books Recommended by Pulitzer Prize Winners".
12. Walsh, Colleen. (2015-03-20). "Plotting Her Return". The Harvard Gazette.
13. (2016-10-03). "Video: ZZ Packer".
14. "ZZ Packer".
15. "ZZ Packer".
16. "2025-2026 Faculty Fellows".
17. (16 January 2025). "MFA for All Spring 2025".
18. [[The Best American Short Stories 2000]]
19. [[Best American Short Stories 2003]]
20. link. (2012-10-15 , ''Indy Week''. August 20, 2008.)
21. (2015-10-09). "Review: '100 Years of Best American Short Stories' is vital yet flawed for loading the canon".
22. (1999-11-01). "[Fiction] Brownies, By ZZ Packer".
23. Packer, Z. Z.. "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere".
24. Packer, Z. Z.. "The Ant of the Self".
25. "Fall 2002 {{!}} Ploughshares".
26. Packer, Z. Z.. (2002-07-14). "The Stranger". Washington Post.
27. (2004-10-17). "Derby Pie (Published 2004)".
28. (2004-10-01). "An Interview with John Kerry".
29. "O Magazine".
30. (2004-11-21). "Losing my religion".
31. (2005-03-06). "'Dr. King's Refrigerator': Thinking Outside the Icebox (Published 2005)".
32. Packer, Z. Z.. (2005-11-20). "Sorry, Not Buying".
33. (2007-04-16). "Buffalo Soldiers".
34. "Washington post". [[The Washington Post]].
35. Packer, Z. Z.. (2007-10-06). "Short story: Gideon by ZZ Packer".
36. "O Magazine".
37. (2008-11-04). "Saved to 'Drafts'".
38. (2008-06-01). "Working the Reunion (Published 2008)".
39. (2009-10-08). "No Polenta, No Cry (Published 2009)".
40. Packer, Z. Z.. "Remembering Updike: ZZ Packer".
41. "Issue 64, Spring 2009".
42. (July 2009). "Real Women's Money Dramas".
43. Packer, Z. Z.. "Dayward".
44. Andrew Foster Altschul. (2008-03-15). "ZZ Packer Takes on Geraldine Ferraro".
45. "Keeping it Weird in Austin, Texas".
46. Packer, ZZ. (2013-02-15). "It's Beyoncé's World and We're Just Living In It".
47. Packer, Z. Z.. "Trump Talk: Your Translation Guide".
48. Packer, Z. Z.. "What to Expect When You're Expecting Fascism".
49. (2018-05-23). "News of an 'Outrage' Used to Mean Something Very, Very Different (Published 2018)".
50. (2018-11-28). "When Is 'Civility' a Duty, and When Is It a Trap? (Published 2018)".
51. (2019-08-14). "A New Literary Timeline of African-American History (Published 2019)".
52. (8 May 2019). "Port Magazine, Truth and Fiction".
53. Packer, Z. Z.. (20 August 2020). "What Happens to a Professor When His Theory of Anti-Racism Goes Mainstream?".
54. (2020-06-25). "Sarah Cooper Doesn't Mimic Trump. She Exposes Him.".
55. Packer, Z. Z.. "The Empty Facts of the Breonna Taylor Decision".
56. "ZZ Packer".
57. "Commonwealth Club awards".
58. (2007-07-30). "2004 Alex Awards".
59. "5 Under 35 Archives".
60. http://www.granta.com/Magazine/97October{{Dead link. (August 2025)
61. Tessa Decarlo, [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/innovators/packer.html "Comedienne of Manners"] {{Webarchive. link. (2011-04-02 , ''Smithsonian'' magazine, October 2007.)
62. Bosman, Julie. (2010-06-02). "20 Young Writers Earn the Envy of Many Others". The New York Times.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::