The ACG, the Robert Bosch Fellowship Alumni Association, and 1014 will host a breakfast briefing with Tamar Shapiro, Author and Urban Development Expert (2009 ACG McCloy Fellow and 1999 Bosch 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 the book, her experiences living and working in eastern Germany, and the continued divisions between western and eastern Germany today.
Tamar Shapiro was raised in the United States and Germany and now lives in Washington, DC. Her first novel, Restitution, is being 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.