Dani Shapiro + Elizabeth Phelps

What memories shape your relationships? Best-selling novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro’s new work Hourglass delivers an intimate, powerful insight into marriage. She sits down with neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps, who shares her expertise analyzing how the human brain processes emotion, particularly as it relates to learning, memory and decision making.Their conversation might shed new light on the role memory plays in assessing the fragility and elasticity of our most essential bonds, and of the accrual of both sorrow and love with the passage of time.

A book signing will follow the program.

Brainwave is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speakers

Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of the memoirs Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, the New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, and has been broadcast on This American Life. Dani was recently Oprah Winfrey’s guest on “Super Soul Sunday.” She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, the New School, and Wesleyan University; she is cofounder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. A contributing editor at Condé Nast Traveler, Dani lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Her most recent book, Hourglass, was just published by Knopf.

Elizabeth A. Phelps received her PhD from Princeton University in 1989, served on the faculty of Yale University until 1999, and is currently the Julius Silver Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. Her laboratory has earned widespread acclaim for its groundbreaking research on how the human brain processes emotion, particularly as it relates to learning, memory, and decision making. Dr. Phelps is the recipient of the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Neuroethics, and Society for Neuroeconomics. Dr. Phelps was the President of the Society for Neuroeconomics, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Social and Affective Neuroscience, and served as the editor of the journal Emotion.