Small Town Dispatches: Matthew Vollmer

by Matthew Vollmer

Welcome to Small Town Dispatches, a new feature on The Peak that recognizes the efforts of sustaining a writing practice in places with unconventional resources. Writing can be deeply isolating, especially when you live outside of cities that are seen as cultural epicenters. So here, Special Features Editor Nadeen Kharputly interviews Shenandoah contributors to gain insights about what it’s like to live in small towns (and towns that feel small): rural areas, college towns, islands, hamlets, and more.

Writer: Matthew Vollmer

Town: Blacksburg, Virginia

Bio: 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.

1. Tell us about your small town - how small is it?

Blacksburg, VA has a population of about 44,000 people, including 30,000 students, which means that during the summer the sense of “small” becomes amplified. But even when all the students are here, it still feels like everything is in reach.

2. What makes your town a unique place for your writing practice?

It’s quiet. It’s charming. It’s idiosyncratic. It’s 16 blocks of downtown establishments and a beautiful, tree-filled campus on a verdant plateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by wilderness and national forests and ancient mountains. The second oldest river in the world is about 20 minutes away. As is the now absent Mountain Lake where the film Dirty Dancing was filmed. It’s a place whose peacefulness has been punctuated by eruptions of intense violence: the Draper’s Meadow Massacre in 1755, when a band of Shawnee attacked white settlers, the shootings of 2007, which left 32 dead; the decapitation of a woman by a jealous admirer; various other murders by stabbings, shootings, and beatings. If you’re like me and so many other citizens here, you wonder how a little town like this could host so much darkness. But then you walk through Hahn Botanical Gardens or across the Drill Field or take a hike through the woods and you acknowledge the beauty of the natural world and you tend to mostly forget all about that stuff. And at the end of most days, especially if you find yourself looking down upon our little town from the municipal golf course, where the tallest ridge in our town can be found, and where I’ve viewed an astounding number of sunsets, it’s easy to summon gratitude for peace and serenity.

Blacksburg, VA at night.

3. Do you have a favorite writing spot?

My first thought is that I don’t but then I notice where I’m writing this now: my living room. I’m sitting on a couch facing the big picture window out of which one of my cats, sitting in the sun atop a cabinet, is sleeping, and I’m glancing up, as I often do, to watch the limbs of an oak tree that has been sinking its roots deeper and deeper in the lawn of my neighbor’s house across the street for over 80 years now, ever since the previous owner planted it there as a sapling that he bought from Sears Roebuck & Co., and I can’t think of a better place than right here, where I’ve written and revised so many things.

4. How do you build community with other writers or creatives in your town?

This is a good question. In the past, we’ve had outreach programs in conjunction with the Moss Arts Center here at Virginia Tech—we’ve held contests for things like “Poetry on the Stairs” and shared that with students, faculty, and community members: the winner had their poem printed on lines that led from the first floor of the lobby area to the second-floor gallery and meeting spaces. Our creative writing program often partners with both our local library for faculty, student, and alumni readings and we’ve done the same with Blacksburg Books, which is a fairly new addition but hugely popular and highly invested in supporting local authors.

Flowers on the campus of Virginia Tech

5. What do you appreciate most about where you live?

Probably the fact that we’re located in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We’re surrounded by mountains and national forest. We’re minutes away from the Appalachian Trail and a host of other hiking and mountain biking opportunities. When the stress of everyday life becomes overwhelming, a walk through the woods can remind you that the natural world is still doing its thing: birds singing, trees asserting their magnificence, creeks rushing and waterfalling, rocks reminding us that sometimes all you need for renewal is to stand on their edges at the top of a mountain and gaze into a deep valley and acknowledge that your problems are likely ephemeral and that beauty is infinite.

A waterfall flowing in the Blue Ridge Mountains

6. What are some of the challenges of living there?

It’s universally acknowledged by Blacksburg residents that we need better restaurants.

The sun setting over Blacksburg, VA

7. What sort of rituals have you cultivated in your town?

It’s about a mile from my house to Shanks Hall, the home of the English Department, and nearly every day I notice something new, while acknowledging what a privilege it is to be able to walk to and from work.

8. Can you share any writing advice that's inspired by your living situation?

My writing advice is usually the same for everyone, no matter where you are: read widely, listen closely, observe details, make as many friends as you can, break all the rules that need to be broken, have fun, and focus on creating the things that you were meant to make.

Matthew Vollmer is the author of two story collections—Future Missionaries of America and Gateway to Paradise—as well as two collections of essays—inscriptions for headstones and Permanent Exhibit. He teaches creative writing and literature in the English Department at Virginia Tech, where he is an associate professor.