ZZ Packer to Teach, Give Reading at CSI

Fiction writer ZZ Packer will visit the College of Staten Island on Wednesday, February 11 to present a master class for voice in fiction for CSI students and a fiction reading for the general public. The master class will take place in Building 2S, Room 218 from 2:30pm to 3:30pm and the fiction reading will be held in the Center for the Arts Recital Hall from 7:30pm to 8:30pm.

Discussing the fiction reading, Cate Marvin, Associate Professor of English at CSI, says that this will be “a presentation of original work by ZZ Packer, one of our country’s most exciting young fiction writers. This event is sure to be lively, thought-provoking, enlightening, and entertaining. Packer, a literary superstar, comes to Staten Island all the way from her home in San Francisco.” Marvin adds, “The Department of English is delighted to sponsor her visit, which is open to CSI students and the Staten Island community.”

ZZ Packer is the author of the short story collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2002), whose title story was included in The New Yorker‘s Debut Fiction issue in 2000. She attended Yale University and the Writing Seminar at Johns Hopkins University, The Writers’ Workshop at Iowa University, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her work has also appeared in Seventeen, Harper’s, and Story magazine, and in The Best American Short Stories (2000), where “Ploughshares” has been anthologized in “25 and Under: Fiction.”