William T. Vollmann was born in California in 1959. He has worked as a journalist for BBC Radio, The New Yorker, Spin, Granta, The Los Angeles Times, and other venues. He is the author of a number of various works of fiction and nonfiction, including Europe Central (Viking, 2005), which won the National Book Award, Poor People (Ecco Press, 2007), which won the French Prix du Meilleur livre étranger in the essay category, and the seven-volume essay on violence Rising Up and Rising Down (McSweeny’s, 2003). He is especially proud of having been (as he found from reading his FBI file) both a Unabomber suspect and an anthrax suspect. Although many of Vollmann’s books and articles contain his photographs and drawings, the first work exclusively devoted to his photography was Imperial, which powerHouse published in 2008 (while Viking brought out an accompanying text volume of the same name).