Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro is a bestselling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets (now in its sixth season). Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Time. She has taught at Columbia and New York University and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference. Her new novel, Signal Fires, will be published by Knopf in October.

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Family Secrets

Dani’s podcast, “Family Secrets” launched into the top 10 of all podcasts on Apple! The podcast has over 22 million downloads, and its sixth season launched on December 9, 2021. Its seventh season is currently in production.

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?

In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history–the life she had lived–crumbled beneath her.

Inheritance is a book about secrets–secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman’s urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in–a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.

Upcoming Appearances

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Key West, FL

Key West Literary Seminar

The Key West Literary Seminar is a four-day literary celebration that explores a different theme each year. In January 2025, the theme is o family — the one we’re born into, those we’ve later built or chosen, and the ones we’ve lost or found or run as far away from as possible.

Registration opens March 7, 2024.

Dani Shapiro wins her sec­ond Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award, and her first JJ Green­berg Memo­r­i­al Award for Fic­tion, for Sig­nal Fires.

Dani Shapiro Shares Excerpt From Her Upcoming Novel Signal Fires, Her ‘Most Personal Book’ Yet

Read the excerpt in People

Entertainment Weekly announces Dani’s forthcoming novel – the first in 15 years! – Signal Fires. Knopf will publish in fall 2022.

 


The paperback edition of Inheritance is an LA TimesWashington Post, Boston Globe, and San Francisco Chronicle, and National Indie bestseller!

 

Dani’s podcast, “Family Secrets” launched into the top 10 of all podcasts on Apple! The podcast has over 33 million downloads, and its ninth season launched on November 9, 2023. Its tenth season is currently in production.

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Inheritance has won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award!

Wired Magazine names Inheritance as one of 2019’s top Science books!

Inheritance named a best book of 2019 by Vanity Fair!

 

Inheritance will be adapted for film by Killer Films!

The New Yorker includes Inheritance in their summer reading round up!

The Today Show features Inheritance in their “20 Beach Reads You Won’t Want to Put Down” segment.

Inheritance debuted on The New York Times Best Seller List at #11!

Daunt Books in the UK has won an auction to publish Inheritance!

Thanks to everyone who watched Dani on Super Soul Sunday