Booksmith is thrilled to host the virtual launch for Matthew Clark Davison and his fiction debut, Doubting Thomas: A Novel. This will be a special evening celebrating queer publishing, featuring a reading by the author, a conversation with Paul Lisicky, and an audience Q&A, with shout-outs to & words from Amble Press and Foglifter Magazine. Join us!

This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.

You can order ** signed copies** of the book here and we'll ship it directly to you (or hold for pickup at our San Francisco shop).

We are happy to fulfill orders anywhere in the world – international postage will be invoiced separately. If you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to contact [email protected].

About the book

Thomas McGurrin is a fourth-grade teacher and openly gay man at a private primary school serving Portland, Oregon's wealthy progressive elite when he is falsely accused of inappropriately touching a male student. The accusation comes just as Thomas is thrust back into the center of his unusual family by his younger brother's battle with cancer. Although cleared of the accusation, Thomas is forced to resign from a job he loves during a potentially life-changing family drama.

Davison's novel explores the discrepancy between the progressive ideals and persistent negative stereotypes among the privileged regarding social status, race, and sexual orientation and the impact of that discrepancy on friendships and family relations.

By turns rueful, humorous, angry, and wise, Doubting Thomas marks the debut of an important writer.

About the authors

Matthew Clark Davison's debut novel, Doubting Thomas, will be published in Summer 2021 by Amble Press. He is creator and teacher of The Lab :: Writing Classes with MCD, a non-academic school started in 2007 in a friend's living room on Douglass Street.The textbook version of The Lab, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by Norton in 2022. His prose has been recently anthologized in Empty The Pews (Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in or on The Advocate, Exquisite Pandemic, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Foglifter, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others; and has been recognized with a Creative Work Grant, Cultural Equities Grant. Clark Gross Award for a Novel-in-Progress, and a Stonewall Alumni Award. 

Paul Lisicky is the author of six books including Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, one of NPR'S Best Books of 2020, as well as The Narrow Door, Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, The Cut, Fence, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Tin House, and in many other magazines and anthologies. He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he has served on the Writing Committee since 2000. He has taught in the creative writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere. He is currently an Associate Professor in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is at work on a memoir Animal Care and Control.

This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.