Each year since 1985, the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence Program has brought a renowned woman writer to campus. The Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence program was established by Dana Zale Gerard (NC ‘85) and made possible by an annual gift from the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation of Dallas, Texas. In 2010, the program became fully endowed through a gift from Martha McCarty Wells (NC’63) and known as the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence program.
Karen Russell will be the 2025 Zale-Kimmerling writer-in-residence.
November 3-5, 2025
Uptown Campus
Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Swamplandia!, one of the New York Times’ ten best books of the year and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the grateful recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” award, and was selected for Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list. She’s the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, and the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, among other honors. She has taught literature and creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of California-Irvine, Williams College, Columbia University, and Bryn Mawr College, and was the Endowed Chair of Texas State’s MFA program.
Past Speakers:
- Tayari Jones 2025
- Rebecca Makkai 2024
- Min Jin Lee 2023
- Britt Bennett 2022
- Valeria Luiselli 2021
- Lauren Groff 2020
- N.K. Jemisin 2019
- Rebecca Solnit 2018
- Meg Wolitzer 2017
- Zadie Smith 2016
- Danielle Evans 2015
- Lorrie Moore 2015
- Susan Choi 2014
- Aimee Bender 2013
- Antonya Nelson 2012
- Valerie Martin 2011
- Amy Hempel 2010
- Clare Messud 2009
- Michelle Tea 2008
- Elizabeth McCracken 2007
- Curtis Sittenfeld 2006
- Julie Orringer 2006
- Ellen Gilchrist 2005
- Mab Segrest 2004
- Thisbe Nissen 2003
- Joanna Scott 2002
- Edwidge Danticat 2001
- Jessica Hagedorn 2000
- Ann Patchett 1999
- Octavia Butler 1998
- Deb Margolin 1997
- Ellen Bryant Voigt 1996
- Dorothy Allison 1995
- Lee Smith 1994
- Rosellen Brown 1994
- Linda Hogan 1993
- Sonia Sanchez 1992
- Ellen Douglas 1991
- E.M. Bronner 1989
- Gloria Naylor 1988
- Nancy Willard 1988
- Carolyn Forche 1987
- Alison Lurie 1986
