ZZ Packer is the author of the forthcoming novel The Thousands and the national best-seller Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, a New York Times Notable Book, winner of a Commonwealth Club Fiction Award, an ALEX Award, and a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Story, Ploughshares, Zoetrope and The Best American Short Stories 2000 and 2004. Her non-fiction has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The American Prospect, Essence, O, The Believer, The Guardian, Salon and The Washington Post Magazine. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rona Jaffe Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 2007, Granta named her one of the Best Young American novelists, Smithsonian magazine named her one of America's Young Innovators, and she was awarded the 5 Under 35 prize by the National Book Award committee. She is editor of New Stories from the South: 2008--The Year's Best.

ZZ lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and her naughty miniature pinscher, Punky.