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William T. Vollmann
William Tanner Vollmann (born July 28, 1959) is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction with the novel Europe Central.
Vollmann was born in Los Angeles and lived there for five years. He attended public high school in Bloomington, Indiana, and has also lived in New Hampshire, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His father was Thomas E. Vollmann, a business professor at Indiana University. When he was nine years old, Vollmann's six-year-old sister drowned in a pond while under his supervision, and he felt responsible for her death. According to him, this loss has influenced much of his work.
Vollmann studied at Deep Springs College, and completed a BA, summa cum laude, in comparative literature at Cornell University, where he lived at the Telluride House.
After graduation, Vollmann went on to the University of California, Berkeley, on a fellowship for a doctoral program in comparative literature. He dropped out after one year.
Vollmann lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife, who is a radiation oncologist. In 2022, Vollmann's daughter Lisa died of complications from alcoholism.
Vollmann worked odd jobs, including a post as a secretary at an insurance company and saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan in 1982. During this trip, he sought to gather information and images that could determine the most deserving candidates for American aid. He eventually embedded himself in a group of mujahideen heading for the front lines. He saw battle with the soldiers, who were fighting the Soviet Union, before he came down with dysentery and had to be dragged through the Hindu Kush mountains. His experiences on this trip inspired his first non-fiction book, An Afghanistan Picture Show, or, How I Saved the World, which was not published until 1992.
Upon his return to the US, Vollmann started work as a computer programmer, even though he had virtually no experience with computers. According to a New York Times Magazine profile by the novelist Madison Smartt Bell, for a year Vollmann wrote much of his first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels, after hours on office computers, subsisting on candy bars from vending machines and hiding from the janitorial staff.
His writing influences include Ernest Hemingway, Comte de Lautréamont, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata and Leo Tolstoy.
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William T. Vollmann
William Tanner Vollmann (born July 28, 1959) is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction with the novel Europe Central.
Vollmann was born in Los Angeles and lived there for five years. He attended public high school in Bloomington, Indiana, and has also lived in New Hampshire, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His father was Thomas E. Vollmann, a business professor at Indiana University. When he was nine years old, Vollmann's six-year-old sister drowned in a pond while under his supervision, and he felt responsible for her death. According to him, this loss has influenced much of his work.
Vollmann studied at Deep Springs College, and completed a BA, summa cum laude, in comparative literature at Cornell University, where he lived at the Telluride House.
After graduation, Vollmann went on to the University of California, Berkeley, on a fellowship for a doctoral program in comparative literature. He dropped out after one year.
Vollmann lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife, who is a radiation oncologist. In 2022, Vollmann's daughter Lisa died of complications from alcoholism.
Vollmann worked odd jobs, including a post as a secretary at an insurance company and saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan in 1982. During this trip, he sought to gather information and images that could determine the most deserving candidates for American aid. He eventually embedded himself in a group of mujahideen heading for the front lines. He saw battle with the soldiers, who were fighting the Soviet Union, before he came down with dysentery and had to be dragged through the Hindu Kush mountains. His experiences on this trip inspired his first non-fiction book, An Afghanistan Picture Show, or, How I Saved the World, which was not published until 1992.
Upon his return to the US, Vollmann started work as a computer programmer, even though he had virtually no experience with computers. According to a New York Times Magazine profile by the novelist Madison Smartt Bell, for a year Vollmann wrote much of his first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels, after hours on office computers, subsisting on candy bars from vending machines and hiding from the janitorial staff.
His writing influences include Ernest Hemingway, Comte de Lautréamont, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata and Leo Tolstoy.