Nell Zink

Helen "Nell" Louise Zink is an American writer living in Germany. After being a long term penpal of Avner Shats, she came to prominence in her fifties with the help of Jonathan Franzen and her novel, Mislaid, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her debut The Wallcreeper was released in the United States by the independent press Dorothy and named one of 100 notable books of 2014 by The New York Times, as was Mislaid. Zink then released Nicotine, Private Novelist, and Doxology through Ecco Press. In 2022 she published Avalon, also a New York Times notable book, with Alfred A. Knopf. In 2025 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.