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Joan Vollmer (February 4, 1923 – September 6, 1951) was an influential participant in the early Beat Generation circle. While a student at Barnard College, she became the roommate of Edie Parker (later married to Jack Kerouac).
Jan 21, 2021 · Joan Vollmer was a patron and lover of the Beat writers, who hosted them in her New York apartment and influenced their art. She died in 1951 when her husband William S. Burroughs accidentally shot her in the head during a drunken game in Mexico City.
Apr 25, 2022 · I’ve only been able to find a handful of photos of Joan Vollmer on the internet, and in half of them she is dead. But Joan was once so vibrantly alive her “electricity seemed almost palpable,” as Joyce Johnson wrote. Joan sat right next to the men of the Beat Generation, co-creating its ideology.
- Katie Bennett
If popular culture remembers that wife, Joan Vollmer, it mostly remembers her for the manner of her death: shot, they say, as a result of Burroughs’ drunken imitation of William Tell.
Joan Vollmer died after four days of torture and as she slumped to the ground, the group rejoiced and waited for her resurrection.
- Nathan Jolly
Sep 28, 2016 · Joan Vollmer was said to be in an unstable condition for many years leading into her death, allegedly stemming from the suicide of her first husband and the sexual abuse she allegedly endured as...
Sep 8, 2009 · Learn about Joan Vollmer, the Beat poet William Burroughs' wife and muse, who died in a tragic accident in 1951. Read essays by James Grauerholz and Jed Birmingham on her role in the Beat movement and Burroughs' life.
