Join us on Wednesday, June 14th at 7pm PT when Javier Fuentes celebrates the release of his novel, Countries of Origin, with Matthew Clark Davison at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/a9GOonexxYA
Praise for Countries of Origin
"Countries of Origin is a tender and heartfelt novel about homecoming in all its complexity and gay love in all its rawness and wonder. It paints a brilliant and evocative portrait of the city of Madrid as it slowly becomes a kind of home for our wandering hero."
--Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician
"Countries of Origin is full of so many pleasures--literary, culinary, amorous--that one almost wants to save it for a special day. But don't save it--read it today. Fuentes has created something beautiful, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful. It's a great book. It's the book to read right now."
--Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost
About Countries of Origin
This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.
It is 2007, and twenty-four-year-old Demetrio is a celebrated pastry chef in New York at the French restaurant Le Bourrelet. This will be his seventh year as the pâtissier and the chef-owner, stern but paternal, feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as head of pastries at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, he wants nothing more than to accept it.
But as an undocumented immigrant he is terrified that he will be found out, so Demetrio makes the difficult decision to return permanently to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. It will mean leaving the only family he knows--his beloved uncle Chus who has brought him up. On his flight to Madrid, Demetrio sits next to the handsome, playful, and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.
In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo's subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy and by anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality, and they avoid their true feelings until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another's lives.
Countries of Origin is powerfully sensual and moving. Javier Fuentes takes you on a journey that will immerse you in the intense and heartbreaking emotions and conflicts of love and loss.
About Javier Fuentes
Javier Fuentes is a Spanish American writer, a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, who earned an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University where he was a teaching fellow. Born in Barcelona, he lives in New York.
About Matthew Clark Davison
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, and won Honorable Mention in Forward Review's INDIES Awards. 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 W.W. Norton. His prose has been published in or on BOMB, LitHub, Lambda Literary, The Advocate, Exquisite Pandemic, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, 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. Matthew is a member of The Writers Grotto and serves on the board of Foglifter Journal and Press.
show less
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/a9GOonexxYA
Praise for Countries of Origin
"Countries of Origin is a tender and heartfelt novel about homecoming in all its complexity and gay love in all its rawness and wonder. It paints a brilliant and evocative portrait of the city of Madrid as it slowly becomes a kind of home for our wandering hero."
--Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician
"Countries of Origin is full of so many pleasures--literary, culinary, amorous--that one almost wants to save it for a special day. But don't save it--read it today. Fuentes has created something beautiful, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful. It's a great book. It's the book to read right now."
--Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost
About Countries of Origin
This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.
It is 2007, and twenty-four-year-old Demetrio is a celebrated pastry chef in New York at the French restaurant Le Bourrelet. This will be his seventh year as the pâtissier and the chef-owner, stern but paternal, feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as head of pastries at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, he wants nothing more than to accept it.
But as an undocumented immigrant he is terrified that he will be found out, so Demetrio makes the difficult decision to return permanently to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. It will mean leaving the only family he knows--his beloved uncle Chus who has brought him up. On his flight to Madrid, Demetrio sits next to the handsome, playful, and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.
In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo's subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy and by anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality, and they avoid their true feelings until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another's lives.
Countries of Origin is powerfully sensual and moving. Javier Fuentes takes you on a journey that will immerse you in the intense and heartbreaking emotions and conflicts of love and loss.
About Javier Fuentes
Javier Fuentes is a Spanish American writer, a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, who earned an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University where he was a teaching fellow. Born in Barcelona, he lives in New York.
About Matthew Clark Davison
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, and won Honorable Mention in Forward Review's INDIES Awards. 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 W.W. Norton. His prose has been published in or on BOMB, LitHub, Lambda Literary, The Advocate, Exquisite Pandemic, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, 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. Matthew is a member of The Writers Grotto and serves on the board of Foglifter Journal and Press.
Join us on Wednesday, June 14th at 7pm PT when Javier Fuentes celebrates the release of his novel, Countries of Origin, with Matthew Clark Davison at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/a9GOonexxYA
Praise for Countries of Origin
"Countries of Origin is a tender and heartfelt novel about homecoming in all its complexity and gay love in all its rawness and wonder. It paints a brilliant and evocative portrait of the city of Madrid as it slowly becomes a kind of home for our wandering hero."
--Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician
"Countries of Origin is full of so many pleasures--literary, culinary, amorous--that one almost wants to save it for a special day. But don't save it--read it today. Fuentes has created something beautiful, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful. It's a great book. It's the book to read right now."
--Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost
About Countries of Origin
This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.
It is 2007, and twenty-four-year-old Demetrio is a celebrated pastry chef in New York at the French restaurant Le Bourrelet. This will be his seventh year as the pâtissier and the chef-owner, stern but paternal, feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as head of pastries at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, he wants nothing more than to accept it.
But as an undocumented immigrant he is terrified that he will be found out, so Demetrio makes the difficult decision to return permanently to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. It will mean leaving the only family he knows--his beloved uncle Chus who has brought him up. On his flight to Madrid, Demetrio sits next to the handsome, playful, and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.
In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo's subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy and by anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality, and they avoid their true feelings until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another's lives.
Countries of Origin is powerfully sensual and moving. Javier Fuentes takes you on a journey that will immerse you in the intense and heartbreaking emotions and conflicts of love and loss.
About Javier Fuentes
Javier Fuentes is a Spanish American writer, a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, who earned an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University where he was a teaching fellow. Born in Barcelona, he lives in New York.
About Matthew Clark Davison
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, and won Honorable Mention in Forward Review's INDIES Awards. 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 W.W. Norton. His prose has been published in or on BOMB, LitHub, Lambda Literary, The Advocate, Exquisite Pandemic, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, 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. Matthew is a member of The Writers Grotto and serves on the board of Foglifter Journal and Press.
read more
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/a9GOonexxYA
Praise for Countries of Origin
"Countries of Origin is a tender and heartfelt novel about homecoming in all its complexity and gay love in all its rawness and wonder. It paints a brilliant and evocative portrait of the city of Madrid as it slowly becomes a kind of home for our wandering hero."
--Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician
"Countries of Origin is full of so many pleasures--literary, culinary, amorous--that one almost wants to save it for a special day. But don't save it--read it today. Fuentes has created something beautiful, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful. It's a great book. It's the book to read right now."
--Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost
About Countries of Origin
This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.
It is 2007, and twenty-four-year-old Demetrio is a celebrated pastry chef in New York at the French restaurant Le Bourrelet. This will be his seventh year as the pâtissier and the chef-owner, stern but paternal, feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as head of pastries at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, he wants nothing more than to accept it.
But as an undocumented immigrant he is terrified that he will be found out, so Demetrio makes the difficult decision to return permanently to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. It will mean leaving the only family he knows--his beloved uncle Chus who has brought him up. On his flight to Madrid, Demetrio sits next to the handsome, playful, and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.
In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo's subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy and by anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality, and they avoid their true feelings until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another's lives.
Countries of Origin is powerfully sensual and moving. Javier Fuentes takes you on a journey that will immerse you in the intense and heartbreaking emotions and conflicts of love and loss.
About Javier Fuentes
Javier Fuentes is a Spanish American writer, a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, who earned an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University where he was a teaching fellow. Born in Barcelona, he lives in New York.
About Matthew Clark Davison
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, and won Honorable Mention in Forward Review's INDIES Awards. 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 W.W. Norton. His prose has been published in or on BOMB, LitHub, Lambda Literary, The Advocate, Exquisite Pandemic, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, 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. Matthew is a member of The Writers Grotto and serves on the board of Foglifter Journal and Press.
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