Dani Shapiro …. still writing…

Dani ShapiroDani Shapiro is the author of one of my favorite memoirs of all time – “Devotion.” I recommend it often and have heard time and time again how much it has meant to readers. Dani is also the author of five novels including “Black & White” and “Family History.”

She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, New York Universty, The New School, and Wesleyan University, and she is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. Her most recent book, “Still Writing,” is sure to become a classic as Shapiro shares her insights in this gorgeous memoir of the writing life. Dani will be one of the guest authors at “An Evening With Authors” on Oct. 8. These are some of the questions I sent to Dani in anticipation of her Rhode Island visit.

ROBIN: What are some of your favorite books on writing? 

DANI: Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life,” Annie Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” Stephen King’s “On Writing.”

ROBIN: You lead various workshops from Kripalu to Sirenland. What are the top three things that participants hope to learn while in attendance? What are some of the surprising things they wind up leaving with?

DANI: I have learned over the years, in teaching writing, that there are two different methodologies, depending on where a writer is in her development.  

There’s writing to get the words down on the page, and then there’s writing to get the words right on the page. The first is generative, and in those workshops and retreats, I bring in various modalities ranging from meditation to yoga, in order to quiet and still the mind, to clear away the detritus, and to allow the writer freedom and permission to find her story.  

In the workshops and retreats that are for writers who already have manuscripts, we read closely, workshop intensively, and try to help the writer make the work the best it can be on its own terms. I think participants in my workshops hope to deepen their work, and find a community. I’m humbled by the way this happens, time and again. I think writers who attend my smaller retreats are often surprised by the bonds that quickly form among the students, and how real and sustaining those bonds are, long after the retreats are over.  

ROBIN: How does your yoga practice inform your writing or vice versa?

DANI: Both my yoga and my meditation practice are the only way I know to quiet my mind so that I can approach the page.  We live in such a noisy world – as if the noise in our heads isn’t already enough!  When I feel overwhelmed, as I often do, by my flooding inbox, my commitments and responsibilities, if I unroll my yoga mat and do my practice, it’s as if my mind is swept clean and I can begin again.  

ROBIN:  Oprah! Super Soul Sunday – what in the world was that like? I don’t know what to ask you first about this so anything you’d like to share from finding out you were to be her guest, to what it was like being with her. And was this your first experience with Oprah?

DANI: It was definitely a peak experience for me, spending time with Oprah. Our conversation lasted well over an hour, and in preparation for it, my promise to myself was that I wanted to be present for it. I didn’t want to be nervous, or self-conscious, stuck in my head, worried about what I was going to say or how it was going to sound.  I wanted to be in that extraordinary moment. I needn’t have worried, because one of Oprah’s great gifts is her intense presence and curiosity.  Once we began speaking, of course the cameras were rolling but I forgot all about them.  I was focused on the very intense and moving conversation she and I were having.  

ROBIN: You and your husband are quite the creative power couple -what’s that like? What sorts of projects do you collaborate on?

DANI: Haha!  I don’t think of us that way.  My husband, Michael Maren, is a journalist-turned filmmaker.  

When I met him he was a war correspondent and then we went through the “Hollywood years” in which he wrote screenplays for major studios, but wasn’t very fulfilled, and in the last several years he’s turned to making his own films – his feature debut, “A Short History of Decay” was released last spring, starring Linda Lavin, Bryan Greenberg, Harris Yulin and others.  I was very involved in that project. We share our work with each other, though we have very different processes. I tend to show him my work when it’s in process, while he waits until he has a draft he’s happy with before he gives it to me.

I think what makes it work is that we are so completely a team. People sometimes ask me if we’re competitive with each other, being two writers who are married, and I can’t imagine such a thing. I really can’t. His victories and defeats are mine, and vice versa. We’re thinking of collaborating on a script and/or a TV series sometime soon. We have written a couple of scripts together in the past, most notably the script for my memoir “Slow Motion,” which Sony bought, and Reese Witherspoon was supposed to star as me, but it never was made. Which is very often the story!  

ROBIN: Your top few summer reads?

DANI: The last few novels I fell in love with are Jenny Offill’s “Dept. Of Speculation” and Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend.”  

ROBIN: What are you working on now?

DANI: My last two books are memoir, and so I’m very much hoping to begin a new novel soon.  I miss writing fiction. 

Dani, along with best-selling authors, John Searles and Susan Jane Gilman, will be at An Evening With Authors on Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. in East Greenwich. Registration is at 6:30. This is Robin’s annual fund-raiser for breast cancer awareness month. Tickets are $30 and include an entertaining conversation-style interview with the authors plus dessert/coffee. Book sales proceeds will also benefit the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. For more information, Robin.readingwithrobin@gmail.com.

ROBIN KALL HOMONOFF is Rhode Island’s own book maven. From author interviews to events with best-selling authors, Robin shares her love of books wherever and whenever possible. You can connect with Robin on Facebook.com/readingwithrobin and follow her on Twitter@robinkall, online at www.readingwithrobin.com is updated constantly with all new author interviews and bookish information.