This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited number of seats are available to attend the event in-store. The event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.
This event includes a book signing. If you would like a signed book but can't attend in person, you may order a signed copy below, prior to the event. If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store with your order at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to tell us to whom the book should be personalized. Please do not email with orders or personalization requests.
If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop's. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!
All Of Us Together In The End is a lyrical examination of transformation after loss, by a writer the New York Times calls "irresistible" and "utterly convincing."
Vollmer’s family memoir shimmers with wonder and enchantment and begins with the death of his mother from early-onset Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Soon after, flashing lights and floating orbs appear in the woods surrounding his family’s home in rural North Carolina, where his widowed father lives. Formative memories of having been raised in the Seventh-day Adventist church resurge in Vollmer’s mind, hastening self-reexamination and reckoning.
He corresponds with a retired geology professor about “ghost lights,” which supposedly occur more in North Carolina than any other American state. He scrolls TikTok. He contacts an eccentric shaman who lives in Spain to have transcendental psychotherapy administered over Zoom. And then Jolene emerges, a woman endeared for decades to Vollmer’s father, holding secrets to their family’s past.
Amidst the turmoil and loneliness of the pandemic, All of Us Together in the End is a poignant and often humorous investigation into belief set in a time where it seems people will believe anything. It is an elegiac affirmation of the awesome, strange, otherworldly ways our loved ones remain alive to us, even when they are out of reach.
Matthew Vollmer is the author of two short-story collections as well as three collections of essays. 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. He teaches in the English Department at Virginia Tech and lives in Blacksburg, VA.
George Singleton has published eight collections of stories, two novels, and a book of writing advice. Over 200 of his stories have appeared in magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Playboy, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Corrington Award for Literary Excellence. He lives in Spartanburg, SC.
