Draft:Laura Shapiro-Kramer

Born July 27, 1948 and raised in a Boston, Massachusetts suburb, Laura Shapiro attended the University of Wisconsin – Madison 1966-1969 and in 1969 moved to Los Angeles where she attended UCLA and lived in Topanga Canyon.

In 1979, she married attorney Jay Kramer and changed her name to Shapiro-Kramer. Jay Kramer represents the estate of James Clavell, the estates of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt and the writers Christopher Curtis and Richard Wesley. He represented Stephen King for 38 years. He represented Dan Erickson and made Erickson’s deal for Severance. He represented Woody King until his death in 2026.

Shapiro-Kramer lived in Tavira, Portugal from 2016-2023. In 2021, she moved to a farm in Litchfield, Connecticut after spending more than fifty summers on Cape Cod.

In 1975 after traveling extensively in Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, Shapiro-Kramer went to work in NYC for Steve Leber and David Krebs and managed their first national tour with Hal Zeiger of Jesus Christ Superstar from 1976-1978.

In 1981 Shapiro Kramer sold David Mamet’s first teleplay, Smashville to ABC. In 1983 Shapiro Kramer produced John Byrne’s Slab Boys on Broadway directed by Robert Allan Ackerman, starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Val Kilmer and others. Ackerman won an Outer Critics Circle Award for his Directing.

In 1991 Shapiro-Kramer’s article about the Feldenkrais method was published in Family Circle Magazine. She appeared as a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show later that year. In 1991 Shapiro Kramer’s memoir, Uncommon Voyage about her experiences parenting a child with special needs was published by Faber and Faber. A second edition was published in 2002 by North Atlantic Press. In 2015, a third edition received a rave review in Publisher’s Weekly which encouraged Blackstone Publishers to record and release an audio book that Shapiro-Kramer narrated.

In 2005, Shapiro-Kramer published “Laura and Myriam’s Incredible Albanian Vacation” for Bardha Publications. The article described her travels to Albania, Kosovo, and the Balkans between 2000-2005 and the documentary film Shqiperi she was producing with the New York Foundation for the Arts where she was the Project Director for The Albyon Project.

In 2013 Shapiro-Kramer’s From Seder to Seder was published in The Jewish Week.

Shapiro-Kramer’s travel articles about Iran and Tasmania, Australia were published in The Forward in 2011, 2014 and 2015.

Shapiro-Kramer was Chair of Resources for Children with Special Needs (now INCLUDENYC) from 1990-1999. She served on the Board and then the Advisory Board of New York City Outward Bound from 1999-2018. Shapiro-Kramer is the Founder and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Iyengar Yoga Association of Greater New York.