Heidi Durrow

Heidi W. Durrow is a graduate of Stanford, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Heidi has worked as a corporate litigator and as a Life Skills trainer to professional athletes of the National Football League and National Basketball Association.

She is the co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast, Mixed Chicks Chat, and the co-founder and co-producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, an annual free public event that celebrates stories of the Mixed experience.

Durrow’s writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Callaloo, Poem/Memoir/Story, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Essence magazine and Newsday.

She is an occasional essay contributor to National Public Radio.

She received writer Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change for “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky,” her first novel, which has been hailed as one of the Best Novels of 2010 by the Washington Post, a Top 10 Book of 2010 by The Oregonian, a Top 10 Buzz Book of 2010 by the Boston Herald and named a Top 10 Debut of 2010 by Booklist.

Ebony Magazine named Heidi as one of its Power 100 Leaders of 2010.