If you're in the Bay Area, we have two free events today featuring ZZ Packer. She's a hot writer and a wonderful person. She has recently been named one of America's Best Novelists by Granta--quite a feat given that this prize was determined based on the in-process manuscript of her current project, a novel about the Buffalo Soldiers. You can read an excerpt here.
I'll be interviewing her on stage for the 1 p.m. event:
1 p.m.: On-stage conversation
followed by audience Q&A and book-signing
SJSU University Room
7:30 p.m.: A Reading from Packer's in-progress historical novel
followed by audience Q&A and book-signing
SJSU Music Concert Hall
More about ZZ:
ZZ Packer is the author of the short story collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, a PEN/Faulkner finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Best American Short Stories (2000 and 2004) and have been read on NPR's Selected Shorts.
ZZ was born in Chicago, and raised in Atlanta and Louisville, Kentucky. Although intent on becoming an electrical engineer, she forsook MIT for Yale (and is forever grateful she did). She received her MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where she also held a Jones Lectureship.
ZZ has been a public high school teacher and barmaid (though not at the same time); has worked as an SAT tutor, a purveyor of vegetables and a coffeeshop barrista, where she indeed wished on multiple occasions to be drinking coffee elsewhere.
ZZ currently lives with her husband and two sons in the Bay Area.
2 comments:
Seems you have so much going on over there. I'm in my own little world in the country here. I like being a recluse. Good luck on your interview, and I also wanted to tell you I loved your poem "My
Father's Ashes." Just beautiful.
I'm also sorry to hear of Lawrence's death. I can't stand all these hate crimes going around.
Children, Old Folks, and animals.
Just this week a female st bernard was shot in the head and dumped in Penn township PA. She was 4 years old, and in good health. Here I am trying to hang on to my 13 year old dog. All I ask is why,
for what. Gotta fly be back soon!
Thank you so much for your compliment about my poem. That poem means so much to me. It feels odd, really, having it published--it's so personal. But I find that as I move through grief, I turn to poetry and other writing and art that expresses grief--it helps me to connect, to realize that there is beauty in the fact that we can feel so deeply.
That's also why it's so good when people express sadness and outrage over the types of violence you write about in your comment.
I like the recluse spirit and move back and forth between being very social and very alone and quiet. As a writer, I have to have a lot of time alone, and I love it.
Post a Comment