Author Talk with Matthew Vollmer and Soraya Palmer
Venue: Blacksburg Library, Blacksburg
Organizations: Matthew Vollmer, Soraya Palmer
Date: Tuesday, April 4, 2023
Time: 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Event Types: Speaking Engagements
Cost: Free
Description:
Blacksburg Library presents an Author Talk with Matthew Vollmer and Soraya Palmer on Tuesday, April 4, 2023.

Join us for Matthew Vollmer's book launch, "All of Us Together in the End". Blacksburg Books will be on hand to sell copies of the book.

Matthew will be joined by and in conversation with author and former student Soraya Palmer whose debut novel, "The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts", comes out this March.

Matthew Vollmer is the author of two collections of short fiction, "Gateway to Paradise" and "Future Missionaries of America", as well as inscriptions for headstones, a collection of essays. With David Shields, he is the co-editor of "Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo Interviews", "Faux-Lectures", "Quasi-Letters", “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts, which collects a number of stories that masquerade as other forms of writing. Vollmer is also the editor of "A Book of Uncommon Prayer", a volume of everyday invocations from over 60 writers, each of whom were charged with writing–regardless of their religious inclinations–a prayer. His fourth book, "Permanent Exhibit", a collection of short prose originally published as status updates on a popular social media platform, will be published in the Fall of 2018.

His work has appeared widely in magazines, including: Paris Review, Glimmer Train, The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, Tin House, The Oxford American, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Ecotone, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Antioch Review, Willow Springs and New Letters. Vollmer is the recipient of a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts grant, as well as the Sturm Award for Creative Arts at Virginia Tech. His work has been short-listed three times for the Best American Short Stories series, and appears in Best American Essays 2013. For a brief time, he served as editor for the 21st Century Prose Series for the University of Michigan Press.

Vollmer holds a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina, an M.A. in English from North Carolina State University, and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. An Associate Professor of English, he is a faculty member of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Virginia Tech. He lives in Blacksburg with his wife and son.

Links:

• http://matthewvollmer.com/
• https://www.twitter.com/matthewvollmer

Soraya Palmer is a Flatbush, New York born-and-raised writer and licensed social worker who advocates for survivors of gender-based violence who are facing criminal charges related to their abuse. She has been interviewed for her work against police brutality, gentrification, and violence in The New York Times and BuzzFeed News. She has been awarded a residency at Blue Mountain Center. She lives in New York.

Blacksburg Library is located at 200 Miller Street in Blacksburg, VA.

For more information, visit: http://www.montgomery-floyd.lib.va.us/ or https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blacksburg-Library/152248358735 or call 540-552-8246.