ZZ Packer is on campus this week as part of the Distinguished Visiting Writer Series put on by the University’s English department.
Packer received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale, a master’s degree from John Hopkins and a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. Her first collection of stories, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” was published in 2003, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was selected by John Updike for the “Today” show Book Club.
Packer was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree in 2003, and Granta Magazine named her one of America’s Best Young Novelists in 2007.
While visiting the University, Packer gave a craft talk on Wednesday, March 15 at 12:35 p.m. in Allen Hall room 135 and will hold a reading on March 16 at 6 p.m. in the LSU Digital Media Center theater on 340 East Parker Boulevard.
Packer said she enjoys coming to campuses and seeing how students are writing.
“I love seeing what people come up with,” Packer said, noting that some of the students will continue writing, and she’ll see their work in a few years.
Packer familiarized herself with Louisiana before her visit, researching the state’s history for an upcoming novel titled “The Thousands,” which follows the lives of several families from the end of the Civil War through the American Indian campaigns in the southwest. The novel was inspired by ancestors who were sharecroppers in the Deep South, Packer said.
While Packer was born in Chicago, she spent her childhood in Atlanta and Louisville, and she said she feels she has “absorbed a lot of what is weird and different about the South.” Packer said the uniqueness of the South is in the stories and characters that inhabit small towns and the elements of storytelling ingrained in the culture.
When Packer went to Yale for her undergraduate studies 20 years ago, she saw herself pursuing something in the field of math or science.. Later in her college career, writing began to seem like a real option for her and, despite uncertainty from her parents and the world in general, she decided to go for it.
“Writers have a suspicion they can’t really do anything else,” Packer said, and she admitted feeling unsure about her decision even in graduate school at John Hopkins. The advice she has for other students in the same position is to simply start now.
“When you really want to do it, you will become self-taught,” Packer said of writing in college, even if it “feels crazy” to be reading and writing so much outside of class material.
Packer used the term “godlike” to describe the feeling of elation when creating something new with writing.
“Even when writing historical subjects, the characters and what they are doing are completely new,” said she of her current project.
