Authors Athena Dixon and Matthew Vollmer to Give Reading at W&L The April 3 reading by the former Shenandoah contributors is part of the literary magazine’s 75th- anniversary celebrations.

By Emily Innes
March 28, 2025

Washington and Lee University presents a public reading with authors Athena Dixon and Matthew Vollmer on April 3 at 6 p.m. in Northen Auditorium inside Leyburn Library, followed by a Q&A session.

The reading is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College. Dixon and Vollmer are former contributors to W&L’s Shenandoah literary magazine, and the upcoming reading is part of Shenandoah’s 75th-anniversary celebrations. In addition to the reading, the authors will visit the university’s Shenandoah internship class on April 3.

Dixon is the author of the essay collections “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” (2020) and “The Loneliness Files” (2023), and her poetry chapbook, “No God in This Room,” was the 2018 winner of the Argus House Press Intersectional Midwest Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and literary journals and magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar, Literary Hub, Shenandoah, and The Washington Square Review. Dixon currently serves as the nonfiction/hybrid editor for Split/Lip Press and a consulting editor for Fourth Genre Magazine.

Vollmer is the author of two short fiction collections, “Gateway to Paradise” (2015) and “Future Missionaries of America” (2010), as well as two collections of essays, “inscriptions for headstones” (2012) and “Permanent Exhibit” (2018). His work has appeared widely in magazines, including the Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Virginia Quarterly Review and Shenandoah. He is the recipient of a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts grant, and his work has been short-listed three times for the Best American Short Stories anthology series and appears in the 2013 edition of Best American Essays. Vollmer is a professor of English at Virginia Tech, where he also serves as the director of the graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs.