The Charlotte Warburg Chapter and the World Affairs Council of Charlotte will host a lunch discussion with Tamar Shapiro, Author of the Novel Restitution and Urban Development Expert (2009 ACG McCloy Fellow).
Tamar Shapiro’s debut novel Restitution tells the story of two American siblings who return to their mother’s East German hometown, from which their mother and grandparents fled in the 1950s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, only to uncover long-buried family secrets and reckon with the meaning of home, memory, and loss. As we mark the 35th anniversary of German reunification in 2025, the novel offers a timely reflection on how the legacies of division and exile continue to shape both nations and families. The discussion will reflect on Restitution, Shapiro’s experiences living and working in eastern Germany, and her journey from a career in law and community development to fiction, through which she continues to explore how individuals and communities seek restitution – whether via legal frameworks, civic engagement, or the power of storytelling.
Tamar Shapiro was raised in the United States and Germany and now lives in Washington, DC. Her first novel, Restitution, was released in September 2025. Other writing has appeared in Poets & Writers (online), as well as Electric Literature and LitHub (both forthcoming). A former attorney and non-profit leader at Mpact, the Center for Community Progress, and the German Marshall Fund, Ms. Shapiro spent decades working on housing and community development policy in the U.S. She was a recipient of a McCloy Fellowship from the American Council on Germany to study vacant property policies in former East Germany and spent a year working on urban policy in Berlin as a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow. Ms. Shapiro attended Harvard Law School and is currently a 2026 MFA candidate in Fiction at Randolph College in Virginia.