On Monday, October 15, the Dana Hall campus was one of the first stops for author Gabrielle Zevin on her latest book tour. Zevin, who has published three novels, took time to speak with English classes and sign copies of her most recent work.

Zevin, who currently lives in New York City, has written three books since graduating from Harvard University in 2000: Elsewhere, Margarettown, and her most recent novel Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. Addressing Dana Hall classes, she encouraged all students to write, adding that writing is a part of everyone's life, not just authors.

"All of you are writers whether you like it or not," Zevin explained to the class gathered before her. "Every time you put pen to paper, you are a writer."

Zevin's big break came in the fourth grade when she volunteered to write her class play and her teacher said yes. She kept writing in high school was able to turn her opinions into money by critiquing concerts for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. In college, she entered several writing contests with no luck, but it was then, after not winning those writing contests, that she decided she would be a writer.

"I moved to New York and became a writer, and it was scary," she said of her life's path. "I had no connections, but I had the conviction to write, and to tell a story."

Hoping to inspire Dana Hall students to write, Zevin advised that "ideas come from everywhere," and she asked them before she left that they be "open to being inspired."