The Indiana University East School of Humanities and Social Sciences will bring award-winning author ZZ Packer to speak as part of the Regional Writers Series. The presentation begins at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 19, in Vivian Auditorium, located in Whitewater Hall.

The presentation and book signing is free and open to the public. Packer will also read from a selection of her work.

Packer is an award-winning author whose bestselling fiction collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and a New York Times Notable Book. Packer won a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named one of American’s Best Young Novelists by Granta, as well as one of Smithsonian Magazine′s Young Innovators in October 2007.

Packer was born in Chicago. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky. A talented young writer, Packer was first published at age 19 in Seventeen. Packer received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. She also has an Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has been named a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University.

ZZ Packer will also teach a fiction class at 3 p.m. in the Student Events Center classroom for IU East students only.

For more information, contact Tanya Perkins, assistant professor of English, at talperk@iue.edu.