William T. Vollmann

William T. Vollmann was born in Los Angeles in 1959. His extensive bibliography includes the novels Butterfly Stories, The Royal Family and Europe Central; the five published instalments of Seven Dreams about the conflicts between the native American Indians and European settlers; collections of short stories (13 Stories and 13 Epitaphs and The Rainbow Stories); a seven-volume critique of violence, Rising Up and Rising Down, and the essay Poor People.

In 2005 he won the National Book Award, the most important US literary prize. He has also received the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and the Whiting Writers’ Award. His journalistic and fictional work has been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Spin and Granta.