ZZ Packer

ZZ Packer
ZZ Packer at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.
Born	Zuwena Packer (1973-01-12) January 12, 1973 (age 44) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Nationality	American
Period	2000-present

ZZ Packer (born January 12, 1973 Chicago, Illinois) is an American writer of short fiction. In 2006 the National Book Foundation named her a 5 under 35 honoree for Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.

ZZ Packer grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and Louisville, Kentucky. "ZZ" was a childhood nickname; Packer's given name is Zuwena (Swahili for "good", Arabic dialect for "beautiful"). She was recognized as a talented writer at an early age, publishing in Seventeen magazine at the age of 19. Packer is a 1990 graduate of Seneca High School, in Louisville, Kentucky.

Packer attended Yale University, where she received a 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. She was named a Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University.

Shortly thereafter, she entered the national literary scene with a high-profile appearance in the Debut Fiction issue of The New Yorker (2000). Her short story in the issue became the title story in her collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (Riverhead Books, 2003), which was published to considerable acclaim. 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." The book was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, a New York Times Notable Book, and personally selected by John Updike for the Today Show Book Club. Her stories have also appeared in Best American Short Stories 2000 and 2003 and she edited New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2008.