Showing results by author "Dani Shapiro" in All Categories

Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19 is a collection of essays, poems, and interviews to serve as a lifeline for negotiating how to connect and thrive during this stressful time of isolation as well as a historical perspective that will remain relevant for years to come. 

From Dani Shapiro, best-selling author of Devotion and Slow Motion, comes a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling. At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Still Writing is an intimate companion to living a creative life. Writers - and anyone with an artistic temperament - will find inspiration and comfort here.

On a summer night in 1985, the lives of three teenagers are shattered by a horrific car crash in which a young woman is killed next to the sprawling oak tree that marks the perimeter of 18 Division Street. For the Wilfs, it will become the deepest kind of family secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken. Secrets preside over the neighborhood along with the majestic oak. As we move through the decades, watching this family change and grow, we see how each of them is haunted by what they choose to ignore.  

Eine Sommernacht 1985: In einem Vorort von New York steigen drei betrunkene Teenager in ein Auto - und nichts ist mehr wie zuvor. Die Geschwister Sarah und Theo zerbrechen fast an der Last des Geheimnisses, das sie seitdem teilen, und selbst 20 Jahre später bestimmt es ihr Leben. Auch ihr Vater Ben, ein pensionierter Arzt, hadert mit seiner Rolle in jener denkwürdigen Nacht. Doch als Bens Begegnung mit dem zehnjährigen Nachbarsjungen Waldo eine Kette von Ereignissen in Gang setzt, droht das Geheimnis zu platzen und ihrer aller Leben in ungeahnte Bahnen zu lenken.

Dani Shapiro was a young girl from a deeply religious home who became the girlfriend of a famous and flamboyant married attorney - her best friend's stepfather. The moment Lenny Klein entered her life, everything changed: She dropped out of college, began to drink heavily, and became estranged from her family and friends. But then the phone call came. There had been an accident on a snowy road near her family's home in New Jersey, and both her parents lay hospitalized in critical condition.

What's fascinating about Dani Shapiro's story "Supernova" is "its focus on the minor catastrophe that is Shenkman, a relatively prosperous man whose minor shortcomings feel, to him alone, monumental and impossible to overlook," writes Benjamin Samuel, co-editor of Electric Literature, in his introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "Despite rowing every day, obsessively racing against an old rival in a computerized simulation, nobody even knows Shenkman is still competing."