My first book, Future Missionaries of America, was published in the U.S. by MacAdam Cage. The paperback is now available via Salt Publishing.

With David Shields, I am the co-editor of Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (forthcoming in fall 2012 from W. W. Norton).

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW:

"Vollmer's irresistible first collection offers a large cast of yearning characters: some lonely, some lost, some in love and some who, landing on the other side of life's devastations--the loss of spouses, children, parents, lovers, friends, money--now find their grief restive and revolting. Emotions may be inexpressible in these stories, but they do find expression, if not through words then through actions. After his father dies, a teenage boy digs holes in the earth until his palms blister. A woman, about to pursue her unfaithful husband, dives underwater again and again for lost car keys. The distraught father of a slain little girl begins following another child he thinks might be her. Despite their realist surfaces and character-driven narratives, these stories have an uneasy relationship with the literary epiphany and can pull up just short of clarifying utterance. Often characters will work toward resolution only to discover that none is forthcoming; and yet, like boxers begging not to have the fight called, they go on. Vollmer writes with equal dexterity about teenagers and adults, men and women, atheists and believers, Goths and jocks, dropouts and doctors--less interested in getting down any particular demographic, it would seem, than in revealing the humans beneath. Expertly structured and utterly convincing, these stories represent the arrival of a strong new voice."

Here's a description of the book (from MacAdam Cage):

"A waiter at Yellowstone National Park seeks consolation in the arms of his dead friend's girlfriend. A young woman vacationing in Idaho becomes obsessed with a female poet and her adopted child. A deadbeat bus-driver with a gambling addiction watches his son attempt the impossible at the X Games. A widow, retreating to a New Hampshire lake house, finds her son living there with another man. A temp in New York City distributes his will and testament to twenty-seven strangers, hoping to convince one of them to be its executor.

"These are just some of the compellingly odd characters found in the pages of Matthew Vollmer's brilliant debut collection, Future Missionaries of America. Taking us from a Seventh Day Adventist boarding school to a traveling exhibition of plasticine bodies, from the moonlit paths of Yellowstone National Park to a quiet New Hampshire lakehouse, Vollmer’s twelve stories are at once sorrowful, exuberant, and absurdly comical.'

From Charles D'Ambrosio, author of The Point and Other Stories and The Dead Fish Museum:

"From the opening rhapsody to the final prayerful note, Matthew Vollmer's stories beautifully script the drama of a changed world in search of new words. Here you'll find the tensile strengths of realism set beside the radical innovations of experiment, the enduring power of the story reinvented for our new day. Virtuosic in its variations yet held together by a ballast of obsession, Future Missionaries of America has more range than most novels while doing brilliantly what stories do best: it deepens the mystery of others by making that mystery familiar."

From Lee Smith, author of Fair & Tender Ladies and The Devil's Dream:

"There are large cracks in America, and a person can fall right down into them, and never be seen again. Many of Matthew Vollmer's characters are on the verge of doing that. Wacked-out teenagers, mountain survivalists, Adventist evangelists, compulsive gamblers, estranged mothers, Goth girls, world-class skateboarders, English department dopeheads, broken-hearted dentists……every one of them caught in the midst of an unimaginable situation, usually involving inexpressible love or grief. I have never read any stories like these. Quite often, these stories are saying the unsayable.'

From Daniel Wallace, author of Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician and Big Fish:

'Matthew Vollmer has a written a book that looks like America: it's big, funny, sad and hopeful; its ambition is to take over the world. I'm behind it one hundred per cent.'

From Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight and Out of the Woods:

'In prose that manages to be both precise and expansive, Matthew Vollmer tells compassionate stories of people forced to take action against difficult circumstances. This collection is bold and risky, written by a courageous new writer."

From Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels, Songs for the Missing and Poe

"The characters who inhabit the hilarious, heartbreaking stories in Future Missionaries of America may be desperate; yet, for all their lost innocence, they have the capacity to celebrate life's joy and pain.  At its best, Matthew Vollmer's writing bursts with a kind of ecstatic poetry."

Read a longer description here.

Order it on Amazon or at The Book Depository (cheap!).