Dani Shapiro is a national treasure and to anyone who loves memoir, she reigns supreme. Dani has a way with words and a way of moving you to stop everything and consider what it is that makes you who you are. I can honestly say she has been a guiding light for me when it comes to writing and podcasting. Her writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, examines our memory, history, biology, experience, spirit, and soul.

Dani has spent her entire life questioning who she was, a single child growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community. After four memoirs and five novels that always revolved around family secrets and identity, she discovers mid-life she is not who she thought she was. After a paternity test proves her beloved dad, who never looked anything like her blonde self, was not in fact her biological father, she questions everything she knew. Today, we delve deep into why family secrets are so incredibly harmful as we discuss her New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance, a most masterful work.

Besides being the author of multiple best-selling books, Dani is also an essayist and a journalist whose short fiction, essays, and journalistic pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, Elle, Vogue, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of the New York Times, and so many more. She's taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, the New School, and Wesleyan University. She is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy, a conference high up on my bucket list. Dani is the host of 2 hit podcasts, Family Secrets and The Way We Live Now, a look at how others are dealing with the pandemic. Dani lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

It truly was my honor to speak one on one with my writing and podcasting idol. She does not disappoint as she moved me to my core and made me think deeply, like the seasoned storyteller she is.

SHOW NOTE LINKS:

Dani Shapiro's Website

Dani Shapiro's "Inheritance- A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love"

Dani Shapiro on Instagram

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