Freaky Friday, Trading Places and the old classic Prince and Pauper get a make-over in Susan Shapiro's Overexposed.  Rachel Solomon, an aspiring shutterbug from a Midwestern Jewish doctor's family, escapes suburban paradise for the bohemia of New York City , much to her kin's dismay.  She gets a job at Vision magazine, replacing the previous art assistant, Elizabeth Mann, a daughter of a famous photographer.  Little does Rachel know, the tall gangly brunette with looks not unlike her own, would replace her in her mother's family album and even in the antique wedding gown that should've been hers.  When Elizabeth speed-marries Rachel's brother, she blissfully abandons her high heels for nursing bras - and the Solomons suddenly acquire a daughter they know how to love.

A Michigan girl who had come to New York to get her MFA from NYU, Shapiro wrote for the New York Times, Village Voice, Newsweek, The Forward, People, More, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan.  She is a New School journalism professor, who lives in Greenwich Village and an author of five non-fiction books.  Based on a true story, Overexposed is her first fiction novel which has already been optioned for a feature film.  It has been called by reviewers a "delightful roman-a-clef" which in French means "a novel with a key" - a book describing reality behind a façade of fiction while key means a table one can use to swap out the names.  In her recent Publisher's Weekly essay "A Tale of Getting Published," Shapiro tells the story of her New York friend Monica who married her brother Brian, moved to Michigan and had four kids.  Shapiro also reveals that it took her a long time to see Overexposed in print. "It took thirteen years to publish the book," she says.  "So instead of a book party it got a book mitzvah."

When asked what her family thinks about the novel, Shapiro humorously said, "I tell my students, the first piece you write that your family hates means that you have found your voice."  Visit Susan Shao on http://www.susanshapiro.net/events.html.