Nicki Orser
I took my first creative writing class almost on a dare—an item scribbled on a list in the back of The Artist's Way in 1994. I thought it was just something to try. Instead, it changed everything.
Since then, I've followed writing through the winding parts of my life: raising children, surviving loss, and piecing together what's inherited and what's chosen. Along the way, I completed an MA in Creative Writing at Sacramento State University and later an MFA at San Francisco State University, where I received the Joe Brainard Creative Writing Fellowship.
My creative nonfiction has been recognized as a finalist for the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction and as runner-up for both the LitFest Emerging Writer Fellowship and the Honeybee Literature Prize. In 2026, I was selected as a Writer in Residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. I'm currently at work on a memoir-in-essays that explores how landscapes, animals, and inherited stories leave their tracks across generations.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
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A voice broken by honesty, shorn clean of sentimentality, speaking from a deep place in the soul far past pretense or performance.
LESLIE JAMISON
Judge, Lit Fest
Emerging Writer Fellowship
Nicki is so bananas—
in ways that are
delicious to me.
CHRISTY DARSEY
Writing Workshop Participant
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The language was spare and powerful. The anecdotes were authentic and helped to lead the story to a memorable conclusion.
HUGH RILEY
Judge, Honeybee Prize
in Nonfiction
