Gabriel Packard

GABRIEL PACKARD

Latest publication:

The New Yorker; print edition, Jan. 28, 2019; read it here.

Short bio:

Gabriel Packard’s debut novel is The Painted Ocean. His writing has appeared in publications worldwide including New York magazine and The New Yorker. He has a BA in English from Oxford University and has guest lectured at universities including Cornell, Yale, Dartmouth, U. Penn, NYU, Oxford and Cambridge.

Long bio:

Gabriel Packard's debut novel, The Painted Ocean (Corsair/Little, Brown) was called “a fearless tour de force” by National Book Award-winner Colum McCann, who also called Gabriel “a major new literary talent,” and it received recognition including being included in W.H. Smith’s Fresh Talent series. Gabriel is the associate director of the Hunter College MFA Program, one of the most selective MFAs in the U.S. He has taught one-off creative-writing seminars at universities in the U.S. and U.K., including Cornell, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Wellesley, U. Penn, Oxford and Cambridge, and his journalism has appeared in dozens of publications worldwide, including The New Yorker, Poets & Writers and New York magazine. 

Gabriel has worked as a researcher for the novelists E.L. Doctorow, Peter Carey (Parrot & Olivier in America) and Jonathan Franzen (Freedom). He was nominated for a New American Voices Award and is the recipient of a K. Blundell Trust Award from the Society of Authors, a Hertog Fellowship and the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award. He was also the editor of the short-run, boutique publication With a Little Help From Our Friends, an anthology of creative writing that contains favorite extracts and short pieces selected by thirty-six writers, including Salman Rushdie, Sharon Olds, Junot Diaz, Deborah Eisenberg and Michael Cunningham.

After graduating from Oxford University with a B.A. in English, Gabriel moved to New York City where he began his career as a reporter and editor.