Matthew Vollmer

As a teacher and writer, Matthew Vollmer seeks to cultivate — in himself and students — an appetite for the countless ways that human consciousness can be represented, and thus the different forms that language — and story — can take.

Vollmer has become increasingly interested in genre: how genre dictates the shape, sound, and appearance of our information; how genre defines boundaries and sets limitations. He believes that if we acknowledge that the rules of the game are often dictated by our genres — categories in which particular types of communication-events take place, according to whatever prescripted patterns the genre in question demands — then the experience of inhabiting a particular genre, of understanding its conventions in order to discover ways to expand it, to break it apart, and make something new, can be an incredibly liberating — if not essential — exercise for writers to engage in. It is, therefore, an activity Vollmer is committed to exploring further, both in the classroom and in his own writing. 

To learn more about Vollmer, visit his personal website.