“With language both elegiac and irreverent, Otte explores characters trapped in liminal spaces between reality and delusion, oblivion and grief, cruelty and devotion, but within the debris something beautiful persists.”

- Salar Abdoh, Author of A Nearby Country Called Love

Nick Otte’s writing has appeared in Boulevard, Electric Literature, i-D Magazine, Arts & Letters, The Baltimore Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Words Without Borders and elsewhere.

He was named runner-up in Boulevard’s 2023 Emerging Writer contest and was a finalist in the 2025 Adrift Short Story Competition. He was the recipient of the 2021 Jerome Lowell DeJure Prize in Creative Writing. He has also received a residency from Jentel Arts.

He earned an MFA from The City College of New York, was a Teacher of Special Programs with the National Writing Project at UC Berkeley, and currently teaches at Baruch College.

He is working on a debut novel, the opening chapter of which has been shortlisted for The Master’s Review Novel Excerpt Prize and longlisted for both Uncharted and Santa Fe Writers Project prizes.

Contact him at: nick.otte@gmail.com