Heidi W. Durrow

Heidi W. Durrow is the New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books), which received writer Barbara Kingsolver’s PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and is a book club favorite. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky has been hailed as one of the Best Novels of 2010 by the Washington Post, a Top 10 Book of 2010 by The Oregonian, and named a Top 10 Debut of 2010 by Booklist.

Ebony Magazine named Heidi as one of its Power 100 Leaders of 2010 along with writers Edwidge Danticat and Malcolm Gladwell. Heidi was nominated for an 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Debut.

Heidi—the first-generation in her family to attend college—is a graduate of Stanford University, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Heidi has worked as a corporate attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and as a Life Skills trainer to professional athletes of the National Football League and National Basketball Association.

She was the founder and producer of the now defunct Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, but now heads the Mixed Remixed Festival, an annual free public event, that celebrates stories of the Mixed race and multiracial experience through films, books and performance. She is an award-winning podcaster and currently the host of a new audio and video podcast called The Mixed Experience.

Heidi is also a highly acclaimed and sought-after public speaker who has spoken at Brown, Exeter, Yale Law School and many other universities nationwide. She has also been a featured speaker at Sundance and other popular festivals, conferences and high schools on creativity, women’s empowerment, and multicultural and multiracial issues. She has been featured as a leading expert on multiracial and multicultural issues and identity by the NBC Nightly News,the New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC, Ebony Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has served as an occasional contributor to National Public Radio and blogs for the Huffington Post.

Heidi W. Durrow is available for speaking engagements and is widely considered an expert on issues about mixed-race and multiracial identity and experience as well as writing.

what are you?

I remember people started asking me that question on a pretty regular basis when I was about 11 and we moved to a racially divided town. At first I thought the question gave me license to tell my life story. "I'm the best speller and I'm best in my class at multiplication all the way through the 12s. I love to run—really fast. And my favorite color is blue. I'm also someone who likes to write poems."

I soon learned that what people wanted to know was: why do you look like you do? Why do you have curly brown hair and light brown skin and blue eyes?

"I'm black and white." It was the only answer that satisfied people.

It seemed like such a silly answer to me. It didn't tell you anything about me really. Wouldn't it be more interesting to know something about my life?

what are you?

I grew up as the middle child and only daughter of an African-American enlisted Air Force man and a white Danish woman. As a military family, we moved around every few years with stints in North Carolina, Turkey, Washington state, and Germany. Our summers and holidays were often spent in my mom's Danish hometown with my beloved aunts, uncles and cousins.

What are you?

I am a product of a peripatetic upbringing and a child of two cultures and languages. I am the result of a love across color lines that was illegal in many states until 1967. I am a mixture of my father's ferocity and my mother's energy and creative spirit.

What are you?

I'm a former corporate lawyer, a former journalist, a former Life Skills trainer for NBA and NFL athletes, a podcaster and a festival producer. I'm a coffee drinker, an avid user of re-usable bendy straws (yes, with the coffee). Oh, and I'm a writer.

What are you?

I am constantly growing, ever-changing, and always trying to learn. My identity is fluid. Today, I am mixed, an African-American Dane. Tomorrow . . . well, you'll have to check in to see.