Episode 25 Bestselling author Susan Shapiro goes behind her genre crossing prose

Behind the Prose

In this Behind the Prose exclusive, I interview Shapiro, who was my thesis mentor while I was an MFA student in the Creative Writing Program at The New School, where she's taught writing since 1993 and won a Distinguished Teaching Award. The first time I took her highly popular "Instant Gratification Takes Too Long" Journalism course, I - like many of the other students -published a personal essay (on the website The Frisky.) I have to credit Shapiro with guiding my foray into the world of creative nonfiction. Once you listen to this interview, you’ll know exactly why I call her New York City’s Writer-in-Residence. I’m not the only student whose writing life has been changed by her insight. More than 85 of her students have landed book deals over the last 10 years. The latest is Aspen Matis whose memoir Girl in the Woods is out this month from HarperCollins. Shapiro's students’ successes are reflective of a philosophy she lives by: publishing karma. You can benefit from Sue's good publishing karma tomorrow at her open-to-the-public free Secrets of Publishing Panel at The New School, 63 Fifth Avenue, Starr Foundation Hall, UL 102, Lower Level, University Center. Joining Shapiro will be Aspen Matis, her literary agent Ryan Harbage, Heliotrope book editor Naomi Rosenblatt, and Daniel Jones, the editor of what might be the personal essayists’ holy grail, the “Modern Love” column in The New York Times.