Ann Packer, who earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1988, returned to Iowa City in April 2011 to read from Swim Back to Me, a novella and five short stories, at Prairie Lights. She sat down for this On the Fly interview during her visit.
In the interview, Packer discusses her admiration of the work of Alice Munro, the ways in which she finds writing energizing, and her belief that a writer is “a person who, in some way, really needs to write.”
In addition to Swim Back to Me, Packer is the author of Mendocino and Other Stories, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, and Songs Without Words. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, published in 2002, collected a Great Lakes Book Award, the Kate Chopin Literary Award, and an American Library Association Award, and was also named a best book of year by a number of publications.
