Gateless Academy Luminary Spotlight

About the Session

Join this rare and intimate conversation with Laura Belgray on the life behind the scenes of her bestselling title Tough Titties: On Living Your Best Life When You’re the F-ing Worst, repped by Park and Fine and published by Hachette. Laura has become one of the foremost experts on the non-fiction launch. 

In this hour-long conflab, Laura and Suzanne show you how to move your life stories into a book that hits the list and winds up as a Kelly Ripa fave. You will learn how to leverage vulnerability, old bullies and some of your worst “mistakes” into non-fiction that makes the reader laugh out loud even while she’s learning to accept the self she thought she had to reject. And, too, there’s all the tea: why Laura almost returned her advance money, who she leans on when writing blocks hit, how her book found its way to a billboard in Times Square and, most of all, how fun it is to prove your first editor wrong when she tells you, “it will never happen.”

About Laura Belgray

Laura Belgray is a two-time alum of the Gateless Writing Academy. She is the founder of Talking Shrimp, co-creator of The Copy Cure, and author of Tough Titties: On Living Your Best Life When You’re the F-ing Worst. She’s written TV spots for clients like NBC, Fandango and Bravo and now helps entrepreneurs and creatives to cash in on their unique personalities, become binge-worthy, and get paid to be one hundred percent themselves. The Copy Cure, her course with Marie Forleo, has helped thousands of creative pros to master and even fall in love with copywriting.

I loved Tough Titties and didn’t want it to end! Through her insightful wit and sarcasm, Laura Belgray speaks to the late bloomers and slow starters in us all. ~ Kelly Ripa, New York Times bestselling author of Live Wire

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.