News from Heidi

I was so incredibly honored that Terry McMillan agreed to participate in the Algonquin Book Club interview event at Book Passage last August. (BTW: The next ABC event is Dec. 8: a live webcast with Robert Goolrick and Garth Stein!) You have no idea how much fun we had! Unfortunately, the digital video recording of the live webcast got scrambled. Luckily, I had my handy-dandy digital voice recorder with me. I was sitting here today getting some great inspiration from my Terry McMillan pen--yes, she gave me a pen! And I was supposed to be thanking her! And I realized that I hadn't shared the audio with all of you here on my website. Well, at last, here it is! Thank you, Ms. Terry McMillan for a wonderful wonderful night. It was an unforgettable delight to share the stage with you!

You can download it: Heidi Durrow & Terry McMillan Algonquin Book Club Night (mp3). You can also

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via itunes and never miss another one of my audio podcasst.

I had the very best time visiting with students and faculty at the College of William & Mary earlier this month! Prof. Jacqueline McLendon, a fellow lover of Nella Larsen, is teaching The Girl Who Fell From the Sky in a course on major African-American women writers. (Too cool, right?) Thank you to everyone I met during my visit!

I just loved my visit to SE Missouri State. I visited at the invitation of Dr. Susan Swartout, an amazing and inspiring professor and writer. She mentioned to me that many of the college's students were the first in their families to go to a four-year college--I totally could relate to that! I loved meeting the students and have been keeping touch with a handful via Facebook. Thank you all for a really amazing trip to Cape Girardeau, MO!

The character Jesse in The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is a graduate of Catlin Gabel High School. Imagine how excited I was to learn that the students were assigned the book as a school-wide summer read, and that I had been invited to speak to them. I had an absolutely wonderful time speaking with the students who had engaging and insightful questions. In particular they wanted to know: Why did the character have to be from Catlin Gabel? Some thought that OES would have suited him better. Thank you to Catlin Gabel for a great time!

I so enjoyed talking at the Pen on Fire Literary Salon along with Danzy Senna in September that I was thrilled to continue the conversation with host Barbara DeMarco-Barrett on her podcast on writing and writers on KUCI-FM. You can hear the interview here.

This was a great panel on how to get that first book published with me, author-extraordinaire Michele Young-Stone, and her agent Michelle Brower of Folio Lit. You can hear the audio here. (It cuts out just about 5 minutes before we ended the night--sorry about that!)

You can download it: How to Get Published at Word Brooklyn (mp3). You can also

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via itunes and never miss another one again.

Remember back in August when I did the CNN Dialogues panel hosted by Wolf Blitzer? Well, that same trip I got to sit for a CNN Red Chair interview (watch the video it really is a red chair) -- CNN Red Chair feature is a newsmaker series that has featured the likes of the current crop of Republican presidential nominees, Chaka Khan and George Clinton, and now me. You can check it out here:

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I was so tickled when I saw the cover of the latest printing of the paperback. I'm not sure that other folks will notice, but I sure do. Instead of the words "National Bestseller", the cover of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky now says "New York Times Bestseller"--Whoo hoo!

A huge thanks to everyone who came to my reading at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History last week. I will tell you, I was pretty nervous about this appearance. Who would want to come? And would my talk be of interest? Well, I must say that the audience was one of the warmest and most welcoming ever. It was a diverse audience: regular museum-goers, book clubs (The Wine Press Book Club pictured here), patrons of the literary arts, writers and parents and individuals interested in the Mixed experience. I was buzzing with excitement by the night's end.  So thank you Heather Moffat and Easter Moorman for the invitation!  I had a great time.
You can download and listen to the audio of the presentation here: I Am A Story: Heidi Durrow Reading & Talk at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Sept. 8, 2011(mp3 file). Or listen below.