WRITE LIKE A MF: A Generative Workshop from The Lab

with Matthew Clark Davison

 Booksmith, San Francisco

Pre-order of The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genre includes entry to this event.

Booksmith is thrilled to host this one-night generative writing workshop with Matthew Clark Davison, co-author (with Alice LaPlante) of The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genre (W.W. Norton). This in-person session invites writers of all levels to reconnect with urgency, voice, and emotional complexity on the page.

The workshop draws from Chapter 1 of The Lab, titled “Write Like a MF”—a nod to Cheryl Strayed’s now-famous advice in her Dear Sugar column at The Rumpus, where she told writer Alissa Bassist to “write like a motherfucker.” In that spirit, we’ll push past hesitation and self-censorship and get to the heart of what moves us to write.

Expect generative prompts, bursts of writing, and space to explore the themes and contradictions that keep calling you back to the page.

Bring a (charged!) laptop and/or a writing notebook!

Admission includes:

– A pre-order of The Lab through Booksmith (your book is your ticket)

– Access to this one-night, in-person writing session

– Guided prompts and provocations inspired by the book

– A welcoming space for writers of all levels, across all genres

To attend:

Pre-order The Lab through Booksmith’s website [insert link]. Select the workshop option at checkout and your name will be added to the guest list. Books can be picked up in-store or shipped after publication.

Space is limited.

About the authors

Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer, editor, and teacher of writing, both fiction and nonfiction. A Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, Alice taught creative writing at both Stanford and in San Francisco State’s MFA program for more than 20 years. A NY Times bestselling author, Alice has published four novels, including NYT Bestseller Turn of Mind, and five non-fiction books, as well as edited best-selling books for many other writers of fiction and nonfiction: The Making of a Story, Write Yourself Out of a Corner, and The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genre, co-authored with Matthew Clark Davison. Alice lives with her family in Mallorca, Spain.

Matthew Clark Davison is co-author (with bestselling writer Alice LaPlante), of The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genre (W.W. Norton ’25) and 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 the creator and teacher of The Lab: Writing Classes with MCD, an online and SF-based non-academic school started in 2007. Matthew is a member of The Writers Grotto and has served on the board of Foglifter Journal and Press. Matthew is Emeritus Faculty in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where he also earned a BA and MFA.