The Story Talks Back

Dani Shapiro: Discovering extraordinary wisdom in fiction, memoir, and everyday life

TSTB pays a return visit to the remarkable Dani Shapiro -- author of eleven books, as well as host and creator of the hit podcast Family Secrets. Her most recent novel, Signal Fires, was named a best book of 2022 by Time Magazine, Washington Post, Amazon, and others, and is a national bestseller. The paperback edition of Signal Fires will publish in October, and Dani is currently working on a television adaptation of the book. Shapiro is also the author of a series of moving, insightful memoirs – most recently Inheritance, which became an instant New York Times best seller and was named a best book of 2019 by Vanity Fair, Wired, and others. Both Signal Fires and Inheritance were winners of the National Jewish Book Award.  Dani’s book on the process and craft of writing, Still Writing, has just been reissued on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. Author photo: Beowulf Sheehan #fiction #novelists #novels #timelessfiction #stargazing #healingtrauma #specialchildren #greatjewishwriters #signalfires #carolynforche #inheritance #familysecrets #dnadiscoveries #biologicalparents #stories #storytelling #storytellers

Preview: Dani Shapiro reveals the very different challenges of writing fiction versus memoir

Over 20-plus years, Dani Shapiro made a name for herself as a best-selling author of deeply revealing and unforgettable memoirs -- including "Slow Motion," "Hourglass," "Devotion," and "Inheritance." But in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Shapiro discovered a forgotten manuscript for an unfinished novel in her office closet -- and her return to fiction, which had been her career focus early on, became essential. The result was "Signal Fires," a wonderfully intimate novel that spans more than two decades and takes us inside the hearts -- and into the well-kept secrets -- of three intertwined families. In this excerpt from our forthcoming full interview with Shapiro -- her second visit to The Story Talks Back -- she talks about the very different demands and opportunities in writing fiction versus memoir, and reveals how the two inform each other in her work. #stories #storytelling #storytellers #danishapiro #signalfires #inheritance #memoir #memoirist #novel #novelist #fiction #familysecrets #bestseller #nationalbookaward #jewishculture #timetravel #astronomy

Yaffa Lerea: Revealing the storytelling artistry of the film editor

In her early twenties, Yaffa Lerea found her calling, working at the heart of storytelling as a film and television editor. Starting her career at a post-production facility by day while taking a night course in film production at New York University, Lerea discovered her passion for editing. Since then she has been an editor on numerous films and TV series, including Ken Burns’ award-winning “Baseball,” CNN’s “The Movies,” "The Sixties," and “The Eighties,” “Project Runway,” MTV’s “The Real World,” and “Twin Towers,” which won an Academy Award as Best Short Documentary. In just the past two years, Lerea produced CNN’s “’Tis the Season: The Holidays on Screen” and co-edited “Shot in the Arm,” a documentary about the anti-vaccine movement. She was also an editor on Amazon’s “Making the Cut” and “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.” Lerea spoke to TSTB from her home in Santa Monica, California. Photo of Yaffa -- during editing of Ken Burns' "Baseball" -- by Stephanie Berger. #stories #storytelling #storytellers #film #filmediting #editors #documentary #postproduction #hollywood #fiulmschool #moviemagic #kenburns #baseball #MTV #projectrunway #roadrules #academyaward #ishtar #NYU

Preview: Noted film editor Yaffa Lerea tells of her NYC apprenticeship in video as storytelling

In a career of over 30 years, Yaffa Lerea has truly honed her craft as a story shaper through film editing. From her work on early episodes of MTV's "The Real World" to her efforts on Ken Burns' seminal "Baseball" documentaries, Lerea has become a sought-after video storyteller in her own right. But how did she get her start? It was all about being in the right place at the right time -- namely, a post-production house in 1980s New York City. There she encountered every kind of filmmaker, from the most obscure to Martin Scorsese, and began to develop her own approach to film and storytelling. Check out this excerpt from our forthcoming full interview with Yaffa Lerea. #filmmaking #filmediting #videoediting #documentary #documentaries #kenburns #woodyallen #martinscorsese #storytelling #storytellers #stories

Timothy Ferris: Turning science into masterful stories — from Stephen Hawking to Voyager and beyond

TSTB shares its full interview with acclaimed science writer, editor, and film producer Timothy Ferris. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ferris reflects on his early career with Rolling Stone magazine, his transition to science writing, his friendship with Stephen Hawking -- including his role in developing the physicist's classic "A Brief History of Time" -- his collaboration with Carl Sagan on the Voyager project, and his lifelong passions for stargazing and music. The author of a dozen books, Ferris has been called “the best science writer of his generation” by The Washington Post. His bestsellers The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky Way have been translated into fifteen languages and were named by The New York Times as among the leading books of the twentieth century. A former editor of Rolling Stone magazine, Ferris has published over 200 articles and essays in The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Harper’s, Scientific American, Vanity Fair, and other periodicals. His three PBS documentary films — "The Creation of the Universe," (1986), “Life Beyond Earth” (1999), and “Seeing in the Dark” (2007) — have been seen by over twenty million viewers. Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft. Now exiting the solar system, the Voyagers are the most distant probes ever created by humans. Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His works have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. #sciencewriting #rollingstone #rollingstonemagazine #writing #writingprocess #writingtips #revision #timothyferris #theuniverse #cosmology #astrophysics #thewholeshebang #stephenhawking #carlsagan #Voyager