The Story Machine

August 7-8, 2024

Matthew Vollmer is the author of two short-story collections—Future Missionaries of America and Gateway to Paradise—as well as three collections of essays—inscriptions for headstones, Permanent Exhibit, and This World Is Not Your Home: Essays, Stories, & Reports. He was the editor of A Book of Uncommon Prayer, which collects invocations from over 60 acclaimed and emerging authors, and served as co-editor of Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts. His work has appeared in venues such as Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Tin House, Oxford American, The Sun, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. A winner of an NEA and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he directs the MFA program at Virginia Tech, where he is a Professor of English. His latest book, All of Us Together in the End, was published by Hub City Press in 2023, and received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Foreword Reviews.

Are you out of ideas? Too full of them? Want to learn how to start a story from absolute scratch, every time, with little to no experience? "The Story Machine Workshop" promises to provide you with strategies to world-build, develop characters and situations that will ignite curiosity and set your imaginations ablaze. Professor and Director of the MFA Program at Virginia Tech, Matthew Vollmer, will lead participants in analog and digital adventures to unlock their creative potential.