Nancy Packer appeared to float above it all, says former professor William Chace, who began teaching alongside her in the English department in 1968. While other new faculty were fretting about their careers, Packer seemed focused on one thing: the craft of the short story. But beneath Packer’s drive was a lifelong impulse—as the youngest of five children born in less than seven years—to prove herself. “You have to see her as this little redhead pounding the dinner table—even standing on the table—demanding to be heard,” says her son, the writer George Packer.
Photo: Linda A. Cicero/Stanford University
A winner of two O. Henry Awards, Packer taught at Stanford for 30 years and earned the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding service to undergraduate education. Her literary work included short story collections, a memoir, and writing handbooks. She was “a masterful writer of very clear-eyed and probing short stories,” says English professor Nicholas Jenkins, director of Stanford’s creative writing program.
Nancy Huddleston Packer, a professor emerita of English and former director of Stanford’s creative writing program, died on April 1 of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 99.
Packer was raised in Washington, D.C., until 1937, when her father, George Huddleston, completed his 11th term in the House of Representatives and the family returned to Birmingham, Ala. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s in theology from Birmingham-Southern College and the University of Chicago, respectively, and, at 31, met her husband, Stanford law professor Herbert Packer. In 1958, she joined him on the Farm, first as a Stegner fellow, then as an assistant professor.
She taught The Novel, Development of the Short Story, and Freshman English, transforming the course by reducing class sizes and creating a pedagogy course for instructors.
She inspired generations of writers, including PEN/Hemingway Award winner Akhil Sharma, a Stegner fellow, and Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Michael Cunningham, ’75. Her critiques were notoriously tough, and her clarity of insight came through even in casual conversation. “She could be frightening in how well she could understand you, and how direct and honest she could be in telling you what she thought,” says her son. It was a lifelong trait. When George visited Packer in her final days, she looked at him with sharp eyes despite her advanced dementia and said, “I love you. I’m proud of you. Now go on about your business. This is boring here.”
Packer was predeceased by her husband. In addition to her son, she is survived by her daughter, the writer Ann Packer, and four grandchildren.
Kali Shiloh is a staff writer at Stanford. Email her at kshiloh@stanford.edu.
