Schrefer, Eliot 1978-

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Schrefer, Eliot 1978-

PERSONAL:

Born 1978. Education: Harvard University, graduated, 2001.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—Richard Pine, Inkwell Management, 521 5th Ave., 26th Fl., New York, NY 10175. E-mail—eliot@eliotschrefer. com.

CAREER:

Writer. Worked for three years as an SAT tutor.

WRITINGS:

Generation (play), 1996.

Contest (screenplay), 2001.

On the Treetops (play), 2003.

The Plague Maiden (screenplay), 2005.

The Blacksmith's Arm (play), 2006.

Glamorous Disasters (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2006.

The New Kid, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Three years as a private SAT tutor to New York City's most privileged youth gave Florida native Eliot Schrefer plenty of fodder for a novel. He knew of tutors being paid to take the SATs for their students, of private sessions costing upwards of one thousand dollars an hour, and of parents threatening legal action when their child got a bad grade. Schrefer talked to Women's Wear Daily interviewer Vanessa Lawrence about when he knew he had the makings of a novel: "I went to a party and someone was like, ‘Oh, tell us a story from your job.’ And then I looked around and there were fifteen people listening." The characters in Schrefer's first novel, Glamorous Disasters, were pulled directly from many of his personal encounters or those of his colleagues. The fictional Thayer family, complete with an absentee father and morally unscrupulous mother, hires Princeton graduate Noah as an SAT tutor; Noah's humble background is no match for the drug-addicted and narcissistic teens, and he is forced to decide how much he will sacrifice for the seemingly cushy job.

Newsweek contributor Peg Tyre described the book as a "acutely observed, smoothly written confection." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the story a "well-plotted morality tale" with "easy momentum." And Emily Cook, writing for Booklist, concluded that Schrefer "delivers a gleefully biting and witty story."