Who Is Shen Tao? 9 Manuscripts, 10 Years, 1 Debut
Part 2 of Poetry & Power: A Master Class with Shen Tao
If you just finished The Poet Empress, you probably went looking for the author. (Possibly after sitting quietly for a minute. That ending does things to people.)
And if you searched "who is Shen Tao," you likely found the same three-sentence bio on every retail site.
But here's the rest of the story, pieced together from her own interviews. For any author still waiting on a first deal, it's one of the most encouraging publishing stories of the year.
→ Catch up on the whole story in The Poet Empress Masterclass | How a Debut Became a Bestseller.
Shen Tao at a Glance
Shen Tao is the author of The Poet Empress, a standalone epic fantasy published in January 2026 by Bramble in the US and Gollancz in the UK.
She was born in China, raised in Toronto, and now lives in the Pacific Northwest.
She wrote for about ten years before selling a book, and The Poet Empress was her ninth manuscript.
The book sold in a six-way auction as part of a two-book deal, then became a USA Today and Sunday Times bestseller.
She now writes full-time, and her next book is an adult fantasy about "a love that spans more than a lifetime."
You can find her online at shentao.ca and on Instagram as @storygoose.
Those are the facts. But for anyone still querying, drafting, or waiting on submission, the path behind them is the part worth studying.
Eight Books in a Drawer
Shen Tao has said she's wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember.
She spent roughly a decade proving it. Eight finished manuscripts came before The Poet Empress, and none of them sold.
Sit with that number for a second. Eight books. Each one took months or years to write. Each one went out into the world hoping to be the one.
So what did those eight books actually get her?
Practice. Every draft was a chance to learn pacing, structure, and voice, and to fail at them privately where nobody would review it. By the time she started book nine, she had a decade of craft behind her.
No finished manuscript is wasted, even one that stays in the drawer forever.
If you're on your third book, or your fifth, or your eighth, this is the part of her story to hold onto. (And yes, I know exactly how long that drawer can feel. Every querying author does. But the result is worth the wait.)
The 7,000-Word Day
Here's the part of the story that sounds like a movie.
Frustrated after so many years without a sale, Tao sat down to start something new. In her words to Publishers Weekly, it was "okay, let me just get something out."
And she wrote the first 7,000 words in a single day.
Then she's quick to add that it was a fluke. The rest of the book was "slow and painful."
She had a world. She had a magic system. What she didn't have yet was a story.
A burst of inspiration can start a book, but it almost never finishes one.
The 7,000-word day makes a great anecdote, but it’s the slow months after it that turned it into a masterful novel.
The Paradox That Made the Book
The story finally came together around a single contradiction.
In Tao's world, poetry is magic, and the most powerful spell can kill even a prince who can't be killed.
The catch? To write it, you have to write a poem of love.
That one rule does an enormous amount of work. It means Wei Yin can't kill the man she hates without first coming to love him. And once she loves him, how can she still want him dead?
→ See how that tension plays out in Loving Terren: The Poet Empress's Layered Villain. (coming soon!)
The world grew from Tao’s own history too. Tao has said many of the classical poems she memorized as a child came from China's Tang Dynasty, a golden age of poetry.
The Azalea Dynasty draws loosely from that era, though she deliberately chose fantasy over strict historical accuracy.
→ Explore how she built it in The Azalea Dynasty: World-Building in The Poet Empress. (coming soon!)
Her Drafting Process (Steal This)
One of the most useful things Tao has shared is exactly how The Poet Empress got written. Here's the process, step by step.
1. She tested the idea before committing to it.
She started with four chapters and an outline, and checked that the structure and emotional weight held up before writing the rest.
2. She wrote a draft she planned to throw away.
Her first full draft existed only to make the world and characters concrete. She's also called this a "zero draft." In that, it was never meant to be good.
3. She spent most of her time on the second draft.
This is where the real book happened. The second draft went to critique partners, then her agent, then beta readers.
4. She revised again with her editors.
At Bramble and Gollancz, the edits focused on clarifying worldbuilding details, living deeper in Wei's emotions in key scenes, and sharpening the pacing.
Yet even with a full outline, the book surprised her. Partway through drafting, she realized Wei's arc was a story of corruption, and she went back and revised the character substantially.
Tao is also candid about her weak spots.
Plotting and outlining are difficult for her, and endings are the hardest. She's thrown out whole premises, plots, and even completed outlines before landing on one that works.
Giving yourself permission to write a throwaway draft is one of the kindest things you can do for your book.
Bestseller, Then Back to School
Here's a detail most people skip right past.
Tao has said she didn't originally write The Poet Empress as a romance. But it sold to Bramble, a romance imprint.
So after landing her two-book deal, she went back to school.
She enrolled in Odyssey's Your Personal Odyssey program and worked with director Jeanne Cavelos on a custom module built around romance, since that wasn't part of the standard syllabus. They also covered writing series, point of view, characterization, and making the jump to being a professional author.
Think about that for a second. She had the deal, the auction, and the bestseller on the way, and she still chose to be a student again.
It’s a great example of how your first book actually puts you at the start of a new learning curve.
→ See why that move matters in Beyond The Poet Empress: Avoiding the One-Hit-Wonder Trap. (coming soon!)
Tao also has advice for authors going to conventions. She has attended WorldCon, World Fantasy Convention, and DragonCon, and she recommends focusing on your peers instead of chasing established industry names.
Those fellow writers are your cohort, and over the years you'll get to watch each other "flourish and grow in your careers."
What Comes Next for Shen Tao
Tao now writes full-time, and book two is already in motion.
She's said the outline for her next adult fantasy took more than a year to develop. It explores "a love that spans more than a lifetime," and she's aiming for the same dark fantasy sensibility as The Poet Empress, with more romance woven in.
That means readers may soon meet a noticeably different Shen Tao book.
What Shen Tao's Story Means for Your Writing Career
Ten years. Eight manuscripts. One throwaway draft. A bestseller.
Tao is proof that nobody can promise your next book will sell. But what her story shows is what the unsold ones are for: they're how you get good enough to write the one that does.
So keep writing your books, because each and every one brings you one step closer to your dream life of being a published author.
Building a career one book at a time
Shen Tao's next book won't look exactly like her last one, and yours probably won't either. Build an author brand around who YOU are as a writer, so it grows with every book you write.
