Born and raised in Brooklyn, James Shapiro studied at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He has taught at Columbia since 1985. In 2011 Shapiro was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Sunday Times, the Irish Times, the New Statesman, and the Financial Times. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the American Academy in Berlin.

The photograph of James Shapiro was taken by Eileen Barroso.