Athens, Ga. – William T. Vollmann, one of the nation’s most prolific and provocative writers, will visit the University of Georgia campus on Friday, Feb. 15 for an afternoon symposium/question and answer session and an evening reading.
The symposium takes place at 4 p.m. in Peabody 115, and the reading at 7 p.m. in the Instructional Learning Plaza North, room N106. Both events are free and open to the public, and both are approved by the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences as “blue card” events for UGA undergraduates.
Vollmann is a novelist and journalist of great range and acclaim. Beginning with his first novel, 1987’s You Bright and Risen Angels, he has published seventeen books which include historical and contemporary fiction, a 3,400 page treatise on violence, short story collections, reportage and even a biography on Copernicus, Uncentering the Earth. A hot commodity on the literary scene since winning the National Book Award in Fiction for 2005’s Europe Central, Vollmann is also the recipient of the Whiting Award, the Shiva Naipaul Award, PEN/Faulkner Award. Most recently The American Academy of Arts and Letters selected him for the Strauss Living Award in Literary Excellence.
In addition to these books, he has published the nonfiction titles Rising Up and Rising Down, Poor People, An Afghanistan Picture Show, and the just-released Riding Toward Everywhere; the novels The Atlas, Argall, The Royal Family, The Rifles, Fathers and Crows, Whores for Gloria, and The Ice-Shirt; and the short story collections The Rainbow Stories, 13 Stories and 13 Epitaphs, and Butterfly Stories. His work has appeared in many of the nation’s finest literary magazines.
Vollmann’s visit to Athens is jointly sponsored by the departments of religion, English, and journalism, as well as by The Georgia Review and the President’s Venture Fund.
For more information, contact Jordan Rothacker at jordanr@uga.edu, or David Ingle at 706/542-0397 or ingle.david@gmail.com.
