Behind his fortress of ungraded papers and assignment sheets, Upper School English teacher Matt Laufer can often be found typing away at his computer or slashing through the margins of students’ essays with his signature blue pen. When he isn’t bogged down with teaching-related work or entertaining his two children, Matt Laufer writes.

For nearly 12 years, Laufer has been working on a first-person perspective memoir about his late maternal grandfather, Benjamin Laufer. Titled “Lies My Grandfather Told You,” the memoir chronicles Benjamin Laufer’s life as a prominent radio and television script writer.

Beginning in World War II, Benjamin Laufer wrote a number of scripts that were used to educate the American public about the war abroad, covering topics such as fascism and sexually transmitted infections being brought back from the war.

It was upon inheriting some of these scripts that Matt Laufer began his deep research into the career of his grandfather—whom he only met on a few occasions—and his work for the game show “The $64,000 Question,” which became embroiled in the scandals of rigged quiz shows during the 1950s.

“Was my grandfather a fraud? Was he a cheat?” Laufer asked. “Did he come upon his career dishonestly, and who did he hurt along the way?” “Question” was cancelled after sources revealed the show’s sponsors interfered with questions being asked to produce the most likable contestant. According to Laufer, the show’s employees often asked the contestants questions they reasonably believed the contestant would be able to answer.

Laufer first fell in love with the art of creative nonfiction as an undergraduate at Yale University, where he took a class in that field. This admiration for creative nonfiction is what, according to Laufer, has given rise to his pursuit of writing outside of academia.

The title of the memoir-to-be is a riff on the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James W. Loewen. According to Laufer, his memoir’s title is a reference to not only the lies told to the public by “Question,” but the lies of omission to Matt Laufer’s family, as Benjamin Laufer became estranged from his daughter in his later years.

“Part of the book is my trying to figure out if he thought about me, if he thought about his daughter’s family and his daughter and her happiness and so on,” Laufer said. “I think he did on some level, and how much and in what ways is part of what I’m trying to figure out.”

Laufer has turned to Parker for assistance with the development of his memoir. With the help of Parker enrichment grants, Laufer has been able to attend summer seminars and workshops to enhance his work, including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. For years, Laufer has workshopped pieces of his memoir on students in his Creative Nonfiction elective.

“The thinking is that it would be fun, hopefully, that it would put myself in the hot seat and help me understand what it’s like to be workshopped,” Laufer said. “It would model how it is to be vulnerable, and I am not an over-the-top gifted writer and researcher … so these are flawed drafts like anybody’s.”

“I know that he has been pursuing this story for a long time,” Upper School English teacher Mike Mahany said. “I feel like his teaching creative nonfiction has kind of inspired him to tell his own story, and he finds the story of his grandfather really compelling. I feel like him teaching that course spurred him on to do some writing of his own.”

For Laufer, finding time to write outside of Parker, however, can be a difficult task.

While writing has oftentimes taken Matt Laufer away from his teaching responsibilities and two young children, he said that he “doesn’t feel guilty.”

“I came across this interesting study by psychologists years ago that said that children who grow up in families that tell stories about the family are happier and healthier and thrive more,” Laufer said. “I’ve always been conscious of how little I know about … a number of my relatives. I always thought the work I do to find the stories, but also to understand my grandfather—and understand myself, as corny as that sounds—will make me a better dad.”

“He writes too much. He’s always in his own thing over there,” fourth grader Josie Laufer said, pointing to Matt Laufer at his desk. “He wakes up at, like, 4:30 in the morning to get all his work done.”

While the memoir’s publication date isn’t in Laufer’s foreseeable future, Laufer has published a few excerpts in sixth grade English teacher George Drury’s publication “Wayland” and to one passage in the online forum “Popula.”

“I am hoping to land a publisher and/or agent and publish a book. I would be lying if I said I weren’t,” Laufer said. “I think if I can have a bunch of smaller chunks, or even a big mess of a manuscript that I feel good about and I think does justice to my grandfather and to the process of my trying to locate. That would be enough.”