SHALENE GUPTA
Shalene Gupta has a BA in writing seminars and psychology from Johns Hopkins and an MS from Columbia Journalism School. In the past Shalene was a reporter for Fortune where she wrote about the intersection of diversity and tech in Silicon Valley. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, ESPN, and Kirkus Reviews. Internationally it has appeared in The New Straits Times, The Jakarta Post, and Mint. Before working as a reporter, she taught English in Malaysia on a Fulbright scholarship and wrote a book documenting the history of the Malaysian Fulbright program. She's a graduate of GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program, where she was a Pauline Scheer fellow. She's the co-author of The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It with Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher (Public Affairs, 2021). She's currently working on a YA novel and a nonfiction book on women's health.
SESSION: How Interviews Can Fuel Your Book Project
Interviews are a powerful tool that can fuel both nonfiction and fiction. They can prove especially transformative when—as in the case of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers—the authors extensively interviewed a variety of people for novels set in times and places outside of their own direct experience. In this session, former Fortune reporter Shalene Gupta will walk through how to effectively interview people, from figuring out who to talk to, to preparing for the interview, to getting the most out of the discussion, and finally organizing your notes to set yourself up for writing success.