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Published Feb 2004
288 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
Published simultaneously in hardcover & paperback. A remarkable debut short-story collection by a fresh and captivating new voice in American literature.
Z.Z. Packer's first collection of short stories is rich with unexpected turns, indelible images, and penetrating insight that belies someone so young. Her stories plunge us into the worlds of people living on the edge and to the flashpoints that make or break them, that shape their worldviews forever. In "The Stranger", a third-grade girl tries to find her place in the microcosm of summer camp in the larger world in 1981 during the height of the Atlanta child murders. The girl's bathroom at camp is the setting for a clash between an all-black and an all-white Brownie troop in "Brownies". Two young women prod the boundaries of friendship and love in "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere".
"Young writers, naturally enough, write about young characters. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is not really limited by this. Instead, there is a sense of a talented writer testing and pushing at those limits, ringing as many changes as possible within her fictional world. It is a world already populated by clamoring, sorrowing, eminently knowable people, and with the promise of more to come." - New York Times
"Packer's handling of race is consistently impressive. While some writers choose to bang the concept on an anvil, and others avoid the subject altogether, this 30-year-old manages to work it into nearly every story without coming off like a public service announcement. But without question Packer's strength is her characters, and when she's at her best she writes like a boxer, capturing everything she needs in rapid-fire sentences." - The Washington Post
"Packer's stories, by turns astringent, brutally honest and sometimes funny, offer readers slices of life..." - USA Today
"Older teens will find much to enjoy in this collection. For those studying the short story as a literary format, it would make an excellent companion to more classic tales." - School Library Journal (recommended for adults & high school)
"Highly personal yet socio-politically acute: a debut collection that cuts to the bone of human experience and packs a lasting wallop." - Kirkus Reviews
"Packer's prose suggests university writing-workshop fiction at its insightful best, full of youthful angst and irreverence, yet polished, professional, and captivating." - Booklist
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: (CC) Larry D. Moore
ZZ Packer grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky. Her given name is Zuwena. Recognized as a talented writer at an early age, her first significant publication was in Seventeen magazine at the age of 19.
Packer attended Yale University, where she received a B.A in 1994. Her graduate work included an M.A. at Johns Hopkins University in 1995 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop 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 (2003), which was published to considerable acclaim. The book was a finalist for the ...
Name Pronunciation
ZZ Packer: zee-zee
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