Gabrielle Zevin '00 (Author & Screenwriter)
By Kim Bendheim '81
Gabrielle Zevin's '00 second novel, MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC, is coming out in September. Her first, ELSEWHERE, is about fifteen year old Liz, who dies in a car accident and finds herself in Elsewhere, living life backwards in the company of her grandmother and her adopted dog Sadie. The novel has many sweetly humorous touches, such as the dog's being named for a Beatles song and a ship captain who, having lived life backwards, becomes a toddler doing a big job. As we discover, there's an order in Elsewhere. It's just the opposite of what you'd expect on earth.
Zevin has a fertile imagination and, along with her partner Hans Canosa '93 (Harvardwood Highlights member profile 01/07), has 5 film projects ready to go. Unlike other writers who specialize in either writing fiction or writing screenplays, Zevin goes back and forth between genres. She wrote the screenplay for CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN, directed by Canosa. The film has an unusual split screen perspective, showing a man and a woman in a hotel room at the same time. It was experimental and not meant to be a blockbuster, explained Zevin. The DVD, released in January, has done very well in Europe and abroad, where it has been released in 50 countries.
Talking about her experience at Harvard, Zevin stresses the importance of making good connections, rather than many. When she met Canosa, he was a nonresident tutor at Cabot, and it is safe to say that for both of them, this connection is at the root of a fruitful and ongoing partnership. "It's nice to be with someone over a long period of time creatively. You learn to speak the same language," said Zevin.
A lot of her creative preoccupation has to do with memory. Her next book, MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC, is about a girl who falls downstairs and loses four years of her life. Some of the memories lost from those four years include her parents' divorce and 9/11. The girl's coming of age without full memory raises the question for Zevin: is a person more than their memories and experiences? What defines character?
Zevin's own character was shaped in part by her supportive parents, both of whom worked at IBM. Her father worked in the creative lab, showing large commercial vendors how IBM products could be integrated into their jobs. Zevin remembers, "His office looked like Epcot [Center]." Her mother worked in marketing at IBM, but she also came home and painted. There were books all over the house. "My parents were always much more interested in life after 5PM," said Zevin, smiling. Perhaps as a result, both parents supported her wish to make art.
Zevin's father is Russian Jewish and her mother is Korean. Zevin has exotic looks and a calm, even demeanor. She states modestly that she didn't feel like a success at Harvard. She spent a lot of time in her room reading, in a cocoon-like period. Still, when she graduated from Harvard, she had a manager. A script of hers was optioned right out of college. Regardless, Zevin believes that success at Harvard is not a prerequisite for success later and advises students interested in film and entertainment to gather information, as she did, and concentrate on making good connections rather than many. She's grateful to Harvard for giving her this time to cocoon and grow. At Harvard, she majored in English, and she took no creative writing courses. Obviously, she didn't need to.
Her own creative path seems to have unfolded smoothly, in several different directions. For instance, she didn't necessarily think she'd write a novel. An experience writing a play on commission had gone poorly, and thinking about how her idea – the idea that bloomed into ELSEWHERE – wasn't going to be a screenplay, she sat down and wrote the much-praised young adult novel.
Zevin has strong opinions about what she likes and doesn't like, which could be why she's been commissioned to write a book review for THE NEW YORK TIMES. "People talk about critics being irrelevant because of the Internet, but you can't have good movies unless you have good critics," she states. Zevin herself became a critic at age fourteen when she wrote a letter to her local newspaper, strongly disagreeing with a concert review. The editor of the newspaper called her up and asked if she wanted to write reviews for the paper, THE FORT LAUDERDALE SUN SENTINEL. She got free concert tickets, plus she was paid $25.00 per review. She remembers it as being "the best job ever," until she got burned out on writing reviews. By then she was off to Harvard, and her next creative adventure had begun.
Zevin now lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with Canosa and their pug, Mrs. DeWinter. They form a creative trio. Although Mrs. DeWinter isn't featured in Zevin's first novel, dogs and the language of canine play an important role in the book. Taking long walks in New York with Mrs. DeWinter helps Zevin's creative process. Which of her current screenplays will be made first remains an open question. What isn't in doubt is that at least one of her projects with Canosa will come to fruition