Eliot Schrefer

This is an interview copied from The authors website and not to be screenshotted, shared on any social media or public websites. THANK YOU

ELIOT: We'd like to welcome Eliot Schrefer to the computer.

''ELIOT (coughs): Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.''

''ELIOT: Eliot, if I may call you Eliot, I'd like to start by asking you a few questions about what brought you to this point. I understand, for example, that you were born premature. A caesarean section, I believe.''

''ELIOT: Yes. Though I can't really see why--''

''ELIOT: It's hardly underdocumented that those who are smaller than their peers in early stages of their lives feel deep needs to exert their personalities later in life. In such desperate need of a caregiver as an infant, you learned to please others in order to survive. This drive develops to such an extent that producing work for the outside world becomes the most authentic way, paradoxically, of being yourself.''

ELIOT: I was told that you'd start by asking me my favorite color.

ELIOT: I chose not to.

''ELIOT: Clearly. I'm a bit thirsty. Would you mind...?''

''ELIOT: Of course not. Have a sip.''

''ELIOT: Thank you. It's yellow, by the way. My favorite color.''

''ELIOT: Now, Eliot. Let's continue with a couple more ice breakers. You're a Pisces, no?''

''ELIOT: A Sagittarius. But I don't believe in astrology.''

''ELIOT: Of course. That's in my notes somewhere, I'm sure. Tell us a bit about your childhood.''

''ELIOT: I was born in Chicago, during the blizzard of 1978. My mom's British, my dad's American. I've got both passports. We lived in Norwich and Cheshire, Connecticut, Santa Rosa, California, Columbia, Maryland, and Clearwater, Florida.''

''ELIOT: Quite a few places. Was your dad in the military?''

''ELIOT: Nope. He just wasn't very good at his job.''

''ELIOT: Awkward. You're aware that Michael Chabon grew up in Columbia, Maryland as well? He's written about it.''

''ELIOT: Yes. I just finished his essay on it. And I'm a big fan of his novels.''

ELIOT: Whom else do you like?

''ELIOT: My favorite writer for adults is E.M. Forster. Particularly Howard's End. His language is unpretentious, his plots engaging, and his paragraphs will crack open with these profound, unexpected insights. For similar reasons I'll also read anything by Lorrie Moore, Edith Wharton, Michael Cunningham, Julia Glass, Nicola Griffith, or Dorothy Parker. That would be some dinner party, wouldn't it?''

ELIOT: I don't follow.

''ELIOT: No bother. Continue.''

ELIOT: Where do you live?

''ELIOT: In New York City. The Upper West Side, near the Museum of Natural History.''

ELIOT: When did you start writing?

''ELIOT: I wrote a fantasy novel when I was in eighth grade, which featured loads of glowing blue swords, archers in green leather, and monsters rearing in anguish. Then I wrote some plays in high school, many of which are terrible and one of which is still produced to this day. During college I didn't really write. Which was good, because it took me a few years afterwards to purge enough academic self-awareness to be able to create readable fiction.''

''ELIOT: Your first novel, Glamorous Disasters, was about a young man from the South who becomes an SAT tutor to the scions of Park Avenue. You also happen to be a young man from the South who became a Manhattan SAT tutor. Coincidence?ELIOT: Not really a coincidence. But I will say my real students are a lot sweeter than the ones in the book.''

''ELIOT: Did you work for a company? How did they feel about your writing Glamorous Disasters?''

''ELIOT: I either quit or got fired, to this day I'm not sure. I work for myself, now.''

ELIOT: I'll put you down as "fired."

ELIOT: Sweet of you.

ELIOT: And your second book?

''ELIOT: I sublet my apartment in the summers, pack a big backpack and wander around sleeping on friends' couches. I was in Barcelona when I wrote The New Kid.''

''ELIOT: It was quite a departure from your first book. Much darker fare.''

ELIOT: Yes.

ELIOT: Any swords?

ELIOT: No. But monsters did rear in pain, I guess.

ELIOT: Your third book is an SAT guide called Hack the SAT?

''ELIOT: That's right. It was a finalist for the National Book Award.''

ELIOT: That's a joke, right?

ELIOT: Yes.

ELIOT: You're on the cover.

''ELIOT: Sort of. We hired a manga-style artist to sketch me. Since we sent her my author photo, which goes down only to my shoulders, she didn't know how tall to make me. That guy on the cover is, oh, half a foot taller than I really am. You know how people have "dream jeans" they hope to fit into someday? That guy's the "dream me."''

''ELIOT: I see we're back to the short thing. How short are you?''

ELIOT: 5'8".

ELIOT: That's more "average" than "short."

''ELIOT: Eh, I was a short kid. It sticks.''

''ELIOT: And now we have The School for Dangerous Girls. How did that come about?''

''ELIOT: I went to lunch with my friend, David Levithan, a great author who also happens to be an editor at Scholastic. He said he had a killer title for a book, and wondered if I'd write it. So I did. It was a perfect setup, really. I'm terrible at titles (case in point being The New Kid, many would argue), and I got to start with a title that works and build the novel from there.''

ELIOT: What's next?

ELIOT: I'm working on another young adult novel for Scholastic.

ELIOT: What's this one about?

''ELIOT: It's not totally formed yet, so I'd rather not say. But you could call it a spiritual successor to The School for Dangerous Girls.''

ELIOT: Are you planning on writing more adult fiction?

''ELIOT: Yes. I'm halfway into a book that might end up being called The Nephew Season. It's about a young man who grew up in rural France in the 1870s, showed tremendous aptitude for the piano, was the toast of Parisian high society, then offended the wrong man and disappeared from history at the age of 19. He was supposed to become France's Mozart, but he just vanished. He was an actual person. I spent last summer at the French archives doing research. Really heartbreaking story.''

ELIOT: A cautionary tale, perhaps?

ELIOT: I'm terrible at piano.

ELIOT: We just don't understand each other, do we, you and I?

''ELIOT: That's the key of writing, I guess, isn't it? Constantly building bridges, both to reach the minds outside and to connect the parts within.''

ELIOT: Stop being so pretentious.

''ELIOT: I don't think I was. I was just trying to answer your question.''

ELIOT: People wonder why, since you're a writer, you don't brood more.

''ELIOT: I really like my life. I feel really lucky. There's not much cause to brood.''

ELIOT: Eliot, thanks for stopping by.

ELIOT: Always a pleasure.