In the speed of your TV remote’s fast-forward author Susan Shapiro will tell you anything you want to know. She walks into a room with a whoosh mark behind her. Though born in the Midwest, she’s more of a New Yorker than the average, well, New Yorker. Within five minutes Shapiro will tell you where she’s from, what she likes, that she’s been a journalist for three decades and published eleven books in eleven years. She’ll take a breath and a swig of bottled water then resume saying she’s taught a course for years at The New School called, “Instant Gratification Takes Too Long.”
Electric volts shoot off her five-ten frame. Her face looks spotlighted against black hair and blacker clothes and her laugh is infectious — wait, she’d cross that out and write, “Cliche.” Let’s try again — her laugh is sexy with a hint of raspy ex-smoker.
There is life before meeting Shapiro, and life afterwards in Shapiroville.
Before Susan Shapiro
I’d published four short stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul books and an essay in a Long Island regional paper.
Life in Shapiroville
My personal essay was published in The New York Times, Dr. Drew saw it. He called and had me as a guest on his show. Three editors asked me to write follow up pieces. A few more editors paid me to reprint it. And now it is required reading in a course at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. I received hundreds of comments, emails and phone calls. It felt like my entire hometown contacted me. And best of all, young girls reached out to me for help.
Here I am reading the essay to Dr. Jan Yager‘s class:
Here’s what happened after the essay was published in The New York Times:
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE DR. DREW TV INTERVIEW
Here I answer the question that I am asked the most:
“Why didn’t you tell your mother, father, or two older sisters?”
And, as if all of that isn’t enough, under Shapiro’s tutelage I won the New York Press creative non-fiction award for my essay about suicide, “9 Lives for a Weeble.” I’ve written frequently for The Jewish Daily Forward (forward.com), The Fix (thefix.com), and many more publications. I am now hard at work on my memoir.