Dani Shapiro will be joining the summer residency in Vermont! Join us on Wednesday, July 1st at 7 pm in the Haybarn Theater for a reading and booksigning, courtesy of our Visiting Writer series. Open to the public. And don’t forget, if you are an alumni of the MFAW program on either campus, you are welcome to get up close and personal with Dani on Thursday morning, by attending her workshop and conversation about writing in the Haybarn at 10:30 AM. Dani’s workshop is open to all participants of the Clockhouse Writers’ Conference too. Alums, take advantage of this opportunity to come back to Goddard!
Dani Shapiro is the author of five novels, two memoirs, and most recently Still Writing, a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling (and a national bestseller). At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, her “love letter to other writers” offers an intimate exploration of what it means to be a writer, to “hone and hone and chisel and chisel away at ourselves until we arrive at that true place, at the deepest level of specificity.” Still Writing distills lessons from Shapiro’s process, struggles, success, and wisdom to inspire writers—at all stages of development— to trust the work, trust themselves, and keep writing. Get to know her before you come by visiting her website, reading her blog, and watching her interview with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday, all available at: danishapiro.com. Here’s some food for thought from her blog:
“Everything I know about life, I know from the page. Everything I know about myself — about love, maturity, grief, joy, loss, redemption — I have learned by sitting alone in a room (or on a plane) sorting it out. What belongs to what? Why does this sentence next to that one seem to build something that feels like music? What am I really trying to say? What am I getting at? I rarely know until I write it. The words become clay that I mold and mold. Without the daily habit, the daily discipline of concentrating everything inside me on that single point of focus, the world flattens. I know this. And yet these years between books are not anything I can prevent from happening. All I can do — all any of us can do — is take care of my instrument – which is to say, stay healthy and protect my inner life – and wait patiently for that blessed sense of rightness to once again appear.”
BIO: Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of the memoirs Devotion and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, The New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and has been broadcast on “This American Life”. Dani was recently Oprah Winfrey’s guest on”Super Soul Sunday,” and was chosen by Arianna Huffington to speak at the New York City “Thrive” conference. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, The New School and Wesleyan University; she is co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. A contributing editor at Condé Nast Traveler, Dani lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Her latest book is, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life.
And if you missed RUTH OZEKI’s reading, also part of our Visiting Writer Series, you can watch it here.