Doree Shafrir


Doree Shafrir is an American author and senior writer at BuzzFeed. She was previously an editor at Rolling Stone, Gawker and The New York Observer. She is the author of the novel STARTUP and co-editor of the collection Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home.

Career

Shafrir departed a history Ph.D. program to begin her career in journalism at the Philadelphia Weekly, then joining the staff of Gawker in its early years. She next worked for Rolling Stone before joining Buzzfeed in 2012 as an editor and culture writer.

Postcards from Yo Momma website and book

With Jessica Grose, Shafrir founded the Postcards From Yo Momma website, where they posted reader-contributed electronic messages from their mothers. She and Grose produced a book based on the site, titled Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home, which was published by Hyperion in March 2009.

''STARTUP''

Shafrir's first novel, STARTUP, was published by Little, Brown on April 25, 2017. Reviewing the novel in The New York Times, Lara Vapnyar called the book "a biting and astute debut novel". In Rolling Stone, Helen Holmes notes Shafrir is a "a seasoned veteran in the world people still refer to as 'new media'" and says Shafrir's extensive experience in the world she describes "helps give Startup its legs. Her measured eye and wealth of understanding is clear in the rendering of characters like Isabel, an assistant who casually leaves her phone on a coffee table when she goes to the bathroom because the notion of someone snatching it is unthinkable, and Victor, an out-of-work boyfriend convinced he's smarter and more important than his employed partner."

Personal life

Shafrir lived in New York for nine years before moving to Los Angeles, where she lives with husband Matt Mira, a comedy writer and podcaster. In an interview with Nerdist Shafrir and Mira described meeting through the Tinder dating app. She said she feared they set an unrealistic example, because they fell in love with the first person they met on the site.