Matthew Vollmer

Matthew Vollmer is the author of two short-story collections—Future Missionaries of America and Gateway to Paradise—as well as three collections of essays—inscriptions for headstones, Permanent Exhibit, and This World Is Not Your Home: Essays, Stories, & Reports. He was the editor of A Book of Uncommon Prayer, which collects invocations from over 60 acclaimed and emerging authors, and served as co-editor of Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts. His work has appeared in venues such as Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Tin House, Oxford American, The Sun, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays.  A winner of an NEA and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he directs the MFA program at Virginia Tech, where he is a Professor of English. His latest book, All of Us Together in the End, was published by Hub City Press in 2023.

I first met Tom McAllister in 2004, when we were first-year students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. At thirty, I felt like an old timer; McAllister seemed by comparison an upstart kid.

TOM McALLISTER with Matthew Vollmer
Soraya Palmer published her debut novel, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, a week before her former professor, Matthew Vollmer, published his sixth book, and first book-length essay: All of Us Together in the End. Both books, as the above title asserts, are about ghosts. To be more specific, they are also about mothers. Even more specifically: mothers who die before their time. And what happens next to everyone they love. 
Soraya Palmer with Matthew Vollmer
Recently the writer Matthew Vollmer began posting a series of beguiling, engaging, and suspiciously literary status updates on his Facebook page.
Status Update: MATTHEW VOLLMER Speaks with Joseph Salvatore
Every time, I think oh boy, not because I don’t admire Lee’s work (I do) but because I have generally have enough to read as it is, but then curiosity gets the best of me and I open the document and start scrolling and find it difficult to stop. His latest book, which also seemed to come out of nowhere, arrived in the mail a couple months ago; I devoured it nearly in one sitting.
SERIAL WANNABE LEE KLEIN with Matthew Vollmer

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