About
the Author

Nate Zachar is a writer from Detroit, Michigan, now residing in Western Massachusetts. He discovered writing at a young age, creating little Goosebumps homage stories on his mom’s typewriter. Over the years he’s gone on to receive a B.A. in Creative Writing from Oakland University, where his short story “Low Battery” won first place in its 2016 Flash Fiction Content, and an M.F.A. in Prose from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he was a Rose Fellow. In addition, he’s attended writing workshops at Northwestern and the University of Michigan’s Bear River Writers’ Conference. His short work has been published in Harpur Palate, Firewords Quarterly, Five 2 One Magazine, Bear River Review, and The Oakland Journal.

In addition to working as a reader for the literary journals Midwestern Gothic, Spark: A Creative Anthology, and a book reviewer for NewPages, Nate has taught writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Holyoke Community College, and with Thrive Scholars’ Summer Academy Program. He’s passionate about carceral education as well, having taught writing at the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, Michigan, the Western Mass Regional Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and the Franklin County Jail in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

Nate’s currently at work on his first novel, a psychological horror, and is represented by Mariah Stovall at Trellis Literary Management. An excerpt from the novel won UMass Amherst’s 2024 Harvey Swados Fiction Prize, of which the judge remarked:

“I had a feeling this submission was the winner when it made me laugh out loud. I knew for sure it was the winner when I couldn’t stop thinking about it days later. Like all the best novel openings, [this one] creeps up on you. What might otherwise be a straightforward story of a young man inheriting his grandmother’s house quickly transforms into a layered account of obsession, mental illness, and guilt. As the chapters unfold, we begin to suspect that both the house and our narrator, Danny, are holding secrets—some of which may be supernatural. The prose here, like the story itself, is at once forthright and furtive, holding back just when the emotion is most urgent.”

-Becky Mandelbaum, author of The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals