Dani Shapiro is the best-selling author of the memoirs, Slow Motion and Devotion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Elle, Granta, and has been widely anthologized. She has taught in writing programs at Columbia, NYU, The New School, and Wesleyan University, and she is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. Shapiro is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure. Her newest book is Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, in which she reflects on over twenty years of writing life.
Ayelet Waldman is the author of several books, including Red Hook Road and the best-selling Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace. Her novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits was made into a film starring Natalie Portman. She is the co-editor of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, and she has published several essays and profiles in The New York Times, Vogue, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. She has also appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “The California Report.” Her forthcoming Love and Treasure, tells the tragic story of an abandoned Hungarian gold train in World War II.