Lakeside inspiration

As a student, Alison Schaffir, ’18, often went to a surprising spot for someone just finishing her coursework for the day: the second floor of Boatwright Memorial Library. She’d plop herself into a big armchair in front of the windows overlooking Westhampton Lake and turn from homework to a labor of love: a novel.

“I’d reward myself by plugging away at my computer to work on a new scene or chapter,” she said via email. “It was like a cathartic release for me to have a passion project outside of my classes.”

Five years later, that passion project is now her debut young adult novel, Your Dream for Me. It tells the story of a 17-year-old girl torn between the worlds of fashion and theater after she meets a classmate with a graceful stride and alluring eyes who is playing the lead in her school’s spring play.

While her lead character spends spring in the eternal heartache of teen love, Schaffir spent her real-life spring 2023 doing book promotion on top of her full-time job. She spent a year working with a publicist on interviews, blog posts, connections with social media influencers, and other tools of modern book promotion.

“Now that the dust has settled, I can finally take a step back and start to think about where my writing will take me next,” Schaffir said. She’s already at work on her next book, a long-distance love story “near and dear to my heart in real life.”