
Shapiro's novels include Playing with Fire, Fugitive Blue, Picturing the Wreck, Family History, Black & White, and Signal Fires. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she was taught by Grace Paley. Shapiro attended a Solomon Schechter Jewish day school through 6th grade, after which she attended the Pingry School in New Jersey. She is the daughter of Paul Shapiro, from an Orthodox Jewish family (who, she later learned through a recreational DNA test, was not her biological father ), and Irene Shapiro, from South Jersey. Shapiro was born Daneile Shapiro on April 10, 1962, In New York City. In February 2019, she created an original podcast on iHeart Radio called Family Secrets.


She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Elle. Dani Shapiro is an American writer, the author of six novels including Family History (2003), Black & White (2007) and most recently Signal Fires (2022) and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion (1998), Devotion (2010), Hourglass (2017), and Inheritance (2019).
