Dani Shapiro, "Inheritance"

In a string of engaging memoirs and five novels, including Hourglass, Black & White, and Family History, Shapiro has explored the infinite nuances of identity—looking closely at the people, events, and memories that make us who we are. Her new book calls all of that into question, recounting what happened when a genetic test revealed that the man she’d always known as her father was not in fact her biological parent. Told with the urgency of a psychological mystery, Shapiro’s story is both an assessment of the role of technology in our lives as well as an utterly engaging look at a woman struggling not just to put a shattered self back together, but to come to terms with a lineage of secrets and deceptions.

Dani Shapiro discusses her book, "Inheritance", with journalist Jennifer Mendelsohn at Politics and Prose.

Shapiro is in conversation with Jennifer Mendelsohn, a seasoned journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Slate. An avid genealogist, she serves on the board of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland and founded the social media movement known as #resistancegenealogy.

DANI SHAPIRO is the author of the memoirs Hourglass, Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Also an essayist and a journalist, Shapiro's short fiction, essays, and journalistic pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of the New York Times, and many other publications. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, the New School, and Wesleyan University; she is cofounder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

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Produced by Tom Warren