Permanent Exhibit

This collection began as a series of well “Liked” status updates that the author posted on Facebook over a six-month period in 2016. He expanded these updates into a series of essays that capture the disjointed yet dopamine-inducing feeling of scrolling through a friend’s timeline. These essays are highly experimental yet familiar, compelling, and engaging. Vollmer infuses his work with personal details: Red Bull, G.I. Joes, Depeche Mode—all of these grab readers like a memoir or short story, and the stream-of-conscious narration will keep them guessing where Vollmer’s mind will go next. The essays read as a case study of conscious thought: drifting from one idea to the next, latching onto strong images and repeated ideas, and more often than not land on profound aha moments that draw the disjointed thoughts together into an extended meditation. HOT TOPIC: living in “Trump country,” life in rural Appalachia, growing up in an Evangelical family, Gen-X nostalgia, fatherhood. Matthew received a literary grant in 2010 from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Sturm Award for Creative Arts at Virginia Tech. His work appears in Best American Essays, Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. Matthew is known for his experimental writing and has edited several collections of prose that break conventions and explore forms of writing beyond established literary traditions (e.g. prayers, epistolary stories, epitaphs, etc.).