Stephen is middle-aged. He's gay. He's content, except when he isn't. Stephen is a teacher. He's a poet. He has a new teaching job in Kamloops, BC. Stephen has HIV.

DR SAD is the story of one man's journey across Canada and through his diagnosis. It is the story of the distance between queer urban spaces and a small campus in a small city in small-town BC. It is the story of discovering the self within the world, and the world within the self, of discovering the difference between living a life and simply enduring one. This is a tragicomic cross-campus, cross-country romp that believes in the power of romance.

Weaving together narratives of past and present, of Toronto's Gay Village and the streets of Kamloops, BC this lively and dynamic semi-autobiographical novel dives deeply into gender and queerness, class and privilege, and the realities of aging. It is a dynamic and engaging hybrid, stylistically daring while remaining intimate and human.

Leaping through time and mixing the playfully serious with the seriously playful, DR SAD blends poetry with prose and finds the humour in despair in one complete, glittering tragedy of triumph

David Bateman is a Toronto-based poet, painter, and arts journalist. He has taught creative writing at various universities across Canada. His four collections of poetry, as well as a collaborative long poem (with Hiromi Goto) were published by Frontenac House Press (Calgary) from 2005 through 2014. His first novel, DR SAD, was published by the University of Calgary Press in November of 2020. A collection of short stories & creative non-fiction entitled A MAD BENT DIVA – an anagram for the author’s name – was published by Hidden Brook Press (Brighton) in 2017.

David Bateman's profile page

David Bateman's voluptuous prose is darkly comic . . . words and metaphors flow and ebb and jump in unexpected ways, before giving a precisely ambiguous reading that is eerily evocative. There is much pleasure to be found.

Drew Rowsome

With this new novel, Bateman reveals the breadth of his talent . . . DR SAD is, like the author himself, smart, funny and kind of wonderful.

Paul Bellini, theBUZZ