Whiting Awards
1 appearances
-
Edition 4 (1988) Winner
William T. Vollmann
ウィリアム・T・ヴォルマン
William T. Vollmann
Pen Names:
Dolores（Female alter ego used during cross-dressing exploration (referenced in his work and essays)）
Profile
- Gender
- Male
- Born
- 1959-07-28 （Los Angeles, California, U.S.）
- Nationality
- United States
- Languages
- English
- Residence History
- Los Angeles (birth) → Bloomington, Indiana → New Hampshire → New York → San Francisco Bay Area → Sacramento, California
Career
- Occupations
- novelist, journalist, short story writer, essayist, war correspondent
- Active Years
- 1987-2025
- Influenced By
- Ernest Hemingway, Comte de Lautréamont, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Leo Tolstoy
Education
| Institution | Faculty | Department | Degree | Period | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deep Springs College | — | — | — | — | United States |
| Cornell University | — | Comparative Literature | BA（summa cum laude） | — | United States |
| University of California, Berkeley (doctoral fellowship) | — | Comparative Literature (doctoral program) | — | — | United States |
Deep Springs College
Country:
United States
Cornell University
Comparative Literature
Degree:
BA（summa cum laude）
Country:
United States
Lived in the Telluride House
University of California, Berkeley (doctoral fellowship)
Comparative Literature (doctoral program)
Country:
United States
Left the doctoral program after one year
Awards
| Year | Award | Work | Category | Organization | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Whiting Award | — | — | The Whiting Foundation | winner |
| 2005 | National Book Award for Fiction | Europe Central | — | National Book Foundation | winner |
| 2008 | Strauss Living Award | — | — | Strauss Living Award (grant) | winner |
Whiting Award
1988
Organization:
The Whiting Foundation
Result:
winner
National Book Award for Fiction
2005
Work:
Europe Central
Organization:
National Book Foundation
Result:
winner
Strauss Living Award
2008
Organization:
Strauss Living Award (grant)
Result:
winner
Awards & Nominations
American Book Awards
1 appearances
-
Edition 40 (2019) Winner
Works
Major Works
You Bright and Risen Angels
1987 literary fictionEarly novel with fantastical and political allegorical elements.
politicsallegoryviolence and ethics
Europe Central
2005 historical fiction / literary fictionA novel set around World War II in Germany and the Soviet Union following a wide cast of characters, including historical figures such as Dmitri Shostakovich.
warmoralityart and politics
Rising Up and Rising Down
2003 non-fiction / treatiseA major work on violence, originally seven volumes (~3,300 pages); later a single-volume condensed edition was published. Represents over 20 years of research and reporting from conflict zones.
ethics of violencewar reportagemoral calculus
Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes (selected volumes)
1990 historical fiction / epicA series of novels engaging with North American settlement and indigenous histories; each volume addresses different times and locales.
colonizationNorth American historycultural contact
Imperial
2009 non-fiction / reportageA nonfiction account detailing life in Imperial County, California, focusing on border-region social issues.
borderpovertysocial observation
Bibliography
- You Bright and Risen Angels (1987)
- The Ice-Shirt (1990)
- Fathers and Crows (1992)
- Rising Up and Rising Down (2003)
- Europe Central (2005)
- Imperial (2009)
- The Dying Grass (2015)
- Last Stories and Other Stories (2014)
Style & Themes
- Literary Style
- dense, reference-rich proseblending of reportage and fictionhistorical reconstruction in narrative
- Recurring Motifs
- violence and its ethicssites of warmarginalized and frontier peoplesgender and self-expression
Health
-
colon cancer数年Undergoing chemotherapy; as of August 2025 he publicly reported a life expectancy of 2–3 years.
Legacy
Renowned for weighty works on war, violence and marginalized peoples; winner of the 2005 National Book Award. His crossover of reportage and fiction, plus large-scale research works, have secured a distinctive place in contemporary literature.
Archives
- The Ohio State University Rare Books & Manuscripts Library (William T. Vollmann Collection)
Quotes
-
'Dolores is a relatively young woman trapped in this fat, aging male body. I’ve bought her a bunch of clothes, but she's not grateful. She would like to get rid of me if she could.'
Source: Interview / New York Times coverage (cited 2013) (2013)
Trivia
- He has publicly eschewed modern conveniences such as cellphones and credit cards.
- In the mid-1990s he was investigated by the FBI as a suspect in the Unabomber case but was cleared; he has described lasting consequences from the files.
- Rising Up and Rising Down (2003) is known as an expansive seven-volume work of roughly 3,300 pages.
- Since 2013 he has publicly discussed his female alter ego 'Dolores' and explored cross-dressing and gender in his work.
- Recipient of multi-year support such as the Strauss Living Award (2008) enabling him to focus on writing.