Orphaned (Scholastic, September 25, 2018).The Darkness Outside Us, an LGBT young adult science fiction novel by Schrefer, was published in 2021 by Harper Collins.īorn in Chicago to a British mother and an American father, Schrefer identifies as gay. Other authors withdrew following Schrefer, and the festival was cancelled. Schrefer withdrew from the 2021 Plum Creek Literacy Festival at Concordia University Nebraska after observing that books with LGBT characters, including his book The Darkness Outside Us, had been excluded from the festival and that the religious University had a discriminatory policy toward LGBT students. In drawing parallels between the bonobo apes and human characters in these novels, Schrefer says that writing about the bonobos 'allowed me to address more nakedly the feelings-jealousy, loyalty, anger, sorrow-that we all experience.' In reviewing his novel Endangered, The New York Times praised the depth of his characters, saying 'As riveting as the action is, it’s the nuanced portraits of the characters, human and ape, that make the story so deeply affecting.' Dennis Abrams of Publishing Perspectives, also discussed in his review of Threatened, the way in which Schrefer 'even makes his chimpanzees. He is currently on the faculty of the Creative Writing MFA Program at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

He is most known for his young adult novels Endangered (2012) and Threatened (2014), which are survival stories featuring young people and great apes.

Schrefer's first novel Glamorous Disasters was published by Simon & Schuster in 2006. Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award 2013 Įliot Schrefer (born November 25, 1978) is an American and British author of both adult and young adult fiction, and a two-time finalist for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature.National Book Award Finalist 2012, 2014.

Endangered book by eliot schrefer