As an award-winning, sought-out teacher, Sue Shapiro is one of the only literary mentors who dares mention money and external success. Maybe that's why she has hundreds of students each term and more than 25,000 former students. They don't want platitudes, they want a clear path to print and prosperity. Instead of a course pack, this book would be required reading for anyone taking Shapiro's seminars and classes. It would be on sale at the dozens of crowded readings, talks, and panels she does every year for audiences of 100 to 1,000 at local colleges, universities, bookstores, and places of worship. She's often accompanied by top literary agents and editors she's freelanced for (as have her students) from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Salon. Several of these long-term colleagues have already offered in-depth interviews full of fascinating and priceless advice that Shapiro weaves throughout, plus verbs. More than thirty of her students have been featured in Daniel Jones' New York Times Modern Love column, several that led to books from top publishing houses.

Shapiro has shared her technique on the road, giving panels, talks, and lectures at the L.A. Press Club; Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Santa Monica; she's spoken at the Writer's Digest Conference on both coasts; Temple University in Philadelphia; Temple Israel and The Detroit Women in Communications. She is the New York Times best-selling author of 10 books, including the acclaimed memoirs Lighting Up, Only as Good as Your Word, and Five Men Who Broke My Heart, the coauthored nonfiction books Unhooked and The Bosnia List, and the novel What's Never Said.