Author Archives: Susan Shapiro

“What if I don’t want to offend anybody?" As a teacher of first-person writing who has published three provocative memoirs that my family hates, I’m often asked this question. It’s a conundrum for all authors. The great novelist E.L. Doctorow once told me there were stories he wouldn’t publish until certain relatives died—and he writes fiction! 
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When it comes to writing nonfiction, there are several rules you must follow. This "Don’t List"covers the basics.

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“There’s no Q&A protocol. You can write the manual,” The New York Times Magazine journalist Deborah Solomon told Columbia Journalism Review in the summer of 2005. Yet a recent controversy over Solomon’s Q&A interviewing techniques in her own weekly column proved her wrong about the lack of protocol for this popular but peculiar genre. Read more

Here’s how to tell an engaging intimate narrative with insight, humor and candor. Read more