Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, The Daily Beast, Lapham’s Quarterly, Slate, Aeon, The Forward, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her documentary film awards include an Independent Spirit Award for directing IFC’s Keep the River on Your Right, and an Emmy nomination for HBO’s Finishing Heaven. Shapiro is the 2021 winner of Best NYC Essay or Article from the GANYC Apple Awards, the 2021 winner of the Damn History Award for “The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes” for The New Yorker and gold medallion winner in the People Profiles category for the Silurian Press Club’s 77th annual Excellence in Journalism Awards. The Stowaway (Simon & Schuster) was her best selling first full-length work of nonfiction, and was an Indie next selection. Her next nonfiction book will be Amelia and George, for Viking Books. She is an adjunct professor of journalism at The NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in the graduate program.