Gateless Academy Luminary Spotlight

About the Session

When Deepa Purushothaman first came to the Gateless Writing Academy, the Gateless community found a quietly powerful woman whose wisdom, if leveraged into book form, could shift the lens of the overarching corporate culture and change thousands of lives.

At the time, she was struggling with some very real questions:

1. Should I hire a ghostwriter?
2. How do I organize my ideas into a page-turning book that will impact readers?
3. Why does the book proposal feel like it takes forever?
4. How do I find the right title?

Deepa went on to create one of the most influential books in her genre: The First, the Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America, repped by Inkwell and published by Harper Business.

During this talk, Suzanne and Deepa will explore how writers answer these tough questions for themselves and how our most burning questions can become powerful drivers for a successful career with the written word.

About Deepa Purushothaman

Deepa Purushothaman is an alum of the Gateless Writing Academy, an author and founder of multiple businesses. In 2022, Deepa’s debut book, The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America was published by Harper Business to international acclaim. She recently founded the re.write, an unconventional think tank advancing a new story of work. Deepa is also an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, a board member of Avasara Academy, India’s first leadership academy for girls, and the Rutgers University Center for Women in Business.

Deepa is a TED and SXSW speaker and has been featured in TIME Magazine, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review. Her TED Talks have over three million views.

Deepa’s firsthand experience as a senior executive, combined with the stories of the influential women she spoke with, has yielded a powerful collective narrative that business leaders would be wise to study closely in their quest not only to recruit and retain the top talent, but also to lead with empathy and understanding. ~ Indra Nooyi, former chairperson and CEO, PepsiCo

About Suzanne Kingsbury, Founder, Gateless Writing 

Suzanne Kingsbury is the founder of Gateless Writing, a worldwide literary arts organization based on the principles of ancient Zen and creative brain science. Gateless Retreats, the Gateless Academy, the Gateless Teacher Training and her personal mentorship have been catalysts for writers who have found themselves on bestseller lists, represented by New York’s most coveted literary agencies, acquired by the bastions of publishing and profiled by the largest media outlets in the world.

Suzanne was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in her mid-twenties to study Buddhism in Sri Lanka, where she found the link between meditation, creative writing and neuroplasticity. In her late twenties, Suzanne was invited to study novel writing with Frank Conroy, then the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, who encouraged her to quit her job and commit her life to writing. She went on to win the Oxford Town Fiction Prize, and her first two novels were published by Scribner, reached bestseller status, were translated widely abroad and optioned for film.

Suzanne received her MFA in Creative Writing and the Literary Arts at Bennington College where she studied the confluence of ancient Zen and creative brain science and created Gateless Writing, a method and a movement that pushes through creative blocks to a landscape of unprecedented creative genius, and helps writers reach the zenith of their power on the page. Suzanne’s work has been profiled in The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone (European edition), People Magazine, O Magazine, Ms. Magazine and many more.

She lives and works on the coast of Connecticut and runs Gateless Teacher Trainings and Retreats for writers all over the world. She considers her home anywhere that Gateless writers live and write.