Jan Yager Archives - Award-Winning Writer and Graphic Designer

Want To Be a Successful Writer? Two Magic Words: SUSAN SHAPIRO

dorriolds — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 11:56:35 +0000

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.

Writers and Wannabe Writers

Visit Susan Shapiro’s website: susanshapiro.net. Buy her books. Take her class.

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My New York Times Essay ‘Defriending My Rapist’ is a Required Reading at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

dorriolds — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 10:28:00 +0000

Today I am speaking at a class because my New York Times essay, “Defriending My Rapist,” is a required reading for the Victimology course at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY).
The course is led by Jan Yager, a professor at the Department of Sociology. Yager has an MA in criminal justice and a PhD in sociology and is the author of a book on crime victims, which has recently been released by amazon as a Kindle title with a new introduction, updated bibliography, and resources.
Dr. Yager’s classic study on crime victims, the book VICTIMS, is now available on Kindle with a new introduction.
She is the author of 35 award-winning books published by Scribner’s, Wiley, Doubleday, Facts on File, Simon & Schuster, Hannacroix Creek Books, and Prentice-Hall, translated into 32 languages, and 250+ articles in Parade, The New York Times, Redbook, Glamour, consumeraffairs.com, and other publications.
Yager is regularly quoted in the media and interviewed on TV/cable and radio programs including the Today Show, Good Morning, America, The View, Oprah, The New York Times, National Public Radio, BBC radio and more.

New York Times Illustration by Kaye Blegvad

Excerpt from my essay:

Facebook suggested I friend him. I guess our social networks overlapped. I guided the mouse toward his photo, and the little pointed hand hovered over his face. Fear and anger swelled up but curiosity won out and I clicked “Add Friend.” He accepted within minutes. Stunned, I wondered if he had forgotten raping me, or if he thought I had.

At 13, I was a lonely upper-middle-class Jewish nerd living on Long Island, in search of a tougher persona. He was part of an edgy crowd that hung out in a parking lot behind the school, sprawling over the cement steps like bored cats on a sofa. It was 1973, and the boys wore black leather jackets, smoked Marlboros and stashed pints of Tango and Thunderbird in their back pockets. One afternoon, making sure my long brown hair covered the blemish on my cheek, I went over and said, “Hi.”

That was really all it took. A few offered nods. One of the girls asked if I wanted to come out with them that night to the cemetery.

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