the Woodstock Writers Festival: Dani Shapiro

I heard Dani Shapiro, the author of five novels and two memoirs, Slow Motion and Devotion. when she appeared on a panel with three other memoirists on the second day of the Woodstock Writers Festival, in the Bearsville Theatre, about 2 miles from the center of town. Dani is also a professor of creative writing at Wesleyan University.
The first person on her panel to speak, Shalom Auslander (Foreskin's Lament), an intensely funny and acerbic writer initially threatened to steal the show with humorous remarks that left the whole audience and his fellow panelists cracking up. But Auslander's fellow panelists, Shapiro among them, quickly showed that they were going to hold their own.
At first glance, Shapiro, 47,  looks younger than her years, except for a profound seriousness and pensiveness that is at odds with that first impression. She was raised in a middle-class Orthodox Jewish home, although it was her father who was Orthodox; her mother was an atheist. At age 23 Shapiro found herself a college dropout with a cocaine habit, mistress to her best friend's wealthy stepfather. Then, one day a car accident left both her parents in critical condition and she took on the responsibility of caring for them. One consequence of the experience was that Shapiro wound up rebuilding her life, returning to both college and her Orthodox Jewish upbringing.

The above paragraph outlines the content of Slow Motion which came out in 1998. But at this panel discussion, Shapiro spoke about Devotion, her latest book, which came out less than a month ago. Devotion was inspired by a series of questions about religion and mortality that her son asked. Determined to try to find him -- and herself -- some good answers, Shapiro set out with the help of religious leaders of several different faiths to seek the answers to some of the basic questions that confound us all.

Shapiro had some of the problems that characterize relationships between many of us and our parents. At one point, she commented to the audience, a therapist told her and her mother, "I don't think there's any hope for the two of you," meaning apparently that their relationship was beyond repair. But judging from Shapiro's remarks and several reviews of her book, she has walked much more than the extra mile toward becoming a decent adult, mother and spouse and a profoundly respected writer and writing teacher.