“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, 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 won the 2026 Novel Excerpt Grand Prize at The Master’s Review .

Contact him at: nick.otte@gmail.com