matthew clark davison

writer & teacher 

Matthew Clark Davison is the author of the novel Doubting Thomas (Amble Press ’21), which was hailed as one of “46 Must-Read Books by Queer Authors” in Esquire Magazine. He is creator and teacher of The Lab :: Writing Classes with MCD, a non-academic school started in 2007. The textbook version of The Lab, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by W.W. Norton. Matthew is a member of The Writers Grotto and serves on the board of Foglifter Journal and Press. Matthew earned a BA and MFA in Creative Writing from SFSU, where he now teaches full-time in the BA/MA/MFA departments. 

the lab

experiments in writing across genre
Co-authored with Alice LaPlante
 
Two novelists and experienced writing teachers compile a multigenre guide with exercises that help writers move from initial impulse to final draft.
 
Many of today’s serious literary writers are moving out of traditional categories of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to experiment with new types of writing that push the boundaries of form and meaning. The goal of this book is to help writers develop an artistic practice that incorporates craft and inspirational techniques from multiple literary genres.
pre-order

A week of inspired generative writing on a mediterranean island

MALLORCA

with THE LAB co-authors MATTHEW CLARK DAVISON, ALICE LaPLANTE, and joined by JILL BIALOSKY – Executive Editor and Vice President W. W. Norton & Company and VICTORIA SKURNICK  – Agent Levine Greenberg and Rostan Literary Agency. 

Creative writing retreat based on new W. W. Norton title, The Lab: Experiments In Writing Across Genre

Seven intensive days of writing to ignite new creative work or expand and deepen existing material.

Space limited to 16 participants

June 14 – June 21, 2025

Register now

doubting thomas

a novel

“Sharply probing…Thanks to the care Davison pays to his characters—each one a fully realized, thinking human in Thomas’s orbit—what could be an over serving of tragedy is instead delivered with clarity and nuance. The result is a novel that manages to take on a number of the world’s traumas…using the personal travails of a gay man at the dusk of Obama’s America to probe at the nature of what it truly means to know oneself.” —SF Chronicle