Rising Up and Rising Down Some Thoughts on Violence Freedom and Urgent Means

Summary: William T. Vollmann was born in Los Angeles in 1959 and attended Deep Springs College and Cornell University. He is the author of, among others, The Atlas (winner of the 1997 PEN Center West Award), You Bright and Risen Angels, The Rainbow Stories, and a series of novels entitled Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, about the collision between the native populations of North America and their colonizers... and oppressors. In addition, Vollmann's nonfiction includes An Afghanistan Picture Show, which describes his crossing into Afghanistan with a group of Islamic commandos in 1982, and Rising Up and Rising Down, a seven-volume treatise on violence that was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2003. His journalism and fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Spin, Gear, and Granta. In 1999, The New Yorker named Vollmann "one of the twenty best writers in America under forty." He lives in California with his wife and daughter. [read more]