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The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genre
Great writing begins with obsession. Two novelists offer an inspiring guide to transforming that obsession, using whichever genre fits best.
Writers don’t need formulas; they need encouragement to take risks. The Lab offers a bold, hands-on approach, urging writers to embrace uncertainty, experiment with form, and investigate what haunts them. It features ten chapters and ninety exercises challenging writers to play with fiction, memoir, and poetry―or push toward hybrid or entirely new forms. This is a book for those ready to dig deep and write fearlessly.
Writers don’t need formulas; they need encouragement to take risks. The Lab offers a bold, hands-on approach, urging writers to embrace uncertainty, experiment with form, and investigate what haunts them. It features ten chapters and ninety exercises challenging writers to play with fiction, memoir, and poetry―or push toward hybrid or entirely new forms. This is a book for those ready to dig deep and write fearlessly.
- GenresWritingNonfiction
480 pages, Paperback
Published July 22, 2025
10 people are currently reading
2237 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Clark Davison
2 books56 followersMatthew 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 creator and teacher of The Lab :: Writing Classes with MCD, a 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.
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