Daneile Joyce "Dani" Shapiro is the author of five novels and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion and Devotion. She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and ELLE. Read full biography of Dani Shapiro →
Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.
When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I'm feeling.
Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it... →
I had never really felt settled in Brooklyn. I think it had to do with growing up in New Jersey and being someone who her whole life wanted to live... →
Novels are my favorite to write and read. I do like writing personal essays, too. I'm not really a short story writer, nor do I tend to gravitate... →
Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We... →
I was raised in an observant Jewish household, so for me, Hebrew prayers - the sounds, the sunlight streaming in from the stained-glass windows of a... →
How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'
I'm a full-time writer, which means I have the entire day to get my work done. But that can also be bad, because that means I have the entire day... →
When we reach reflexively for something to dull an ache inside of us, in that very moment of reaching, we are hiding from our pain. We're storing... →
I don't think it's possible to separate out the strands of a writer's history, circumstances, life events, and that writer's themes.
I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.
I used to act in television commercials when I was a kid and a young adult.
Daneile Joyce "Dani" Shapiro is the author of five novels and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion and Devotion. She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and ELLE.