Heidi W. Durrow

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Heidi Wedel Durrow
Born (1969-06-21) June 21, 1969
Nationality American
Alma mater Stanford University
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Yale Law School

Heidi W. Durrow (born June 21, 1969) is an American writer, author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, and the winner of the 2008 Bellwether Prize for Fiction.

Biography

Early life and education

Durrow, the daughter of a white Danish immigrant and an African-American Air Force man, grew up in part overseas in Turkey, Germany, and Denmark.[1] In 1980 her family settled in Portland, Oregon, where she attended Jefferson High School. She majored in English at Stanford University and wrote a weekly column for the Stanford Daily, graduating in 1991 with Honors. She continued her education at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and received a M.S. in 1992. She then attended Yale Law School and received her J.D. in 1995.

Career

Durrow’s career began at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City, where she worked as a corporate litigator on antitrust, commercial contracts, and employment discrimination cases. She left Cravath in 1997 to pursue a literary career.

Durrow worked as a consultant to the National Basketball Association and National Football League as a Life Skills trainer from 2000 to 2006.[2]

Her first literary publication, “Light-skinned-ed Girl”, appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review Spring/Summer 2005.[3] The story was shortlisted as one of the Top 100 Stories in Best American Short Stories 2006, ed. Ann Patchett. Durrow's writing has also appeared in The Literary Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and Poem/Memoir/Story.

Durrow is a host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat focused on issues of being racially and culturally mixed.[4]

In 2008 Durrow became a co-founder of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival.[5] An annual free public event, the Festival celebrates stories of the Mixed experience including stories about biracial identity, transracially adopted families, and interracial and intercultural relationships and friendships. The Festival, a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, presents films, readings, workshops, a family event, and the largest West Coast "((Loving Day celebration))". The Festival also presents the annual Loving Prize for storytellers and community leaders who have shown exceptional dedication to sharing and illuminating the Mixed experience. Past Loving Prize recipients include: writer James McBride, Hapa artist Kip Fulbeck, TV producer and writer Angela Nissel, and scholar Maria P. P. Root.

Durrow created a new festival called Mixed Remixed which is scheduled to premiere in 2014[6][7]

Published works

Awards

References

  1. ↑ Lise Funderburg, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (Morrow, 1995), pp. 351-59.
  2. ↑ Erica Boeke and Chris De Benedetti, Gameface: The Kick-Ass Guide for Women Who Love Pro Sports (Virgin, 2008), pp. 31-35.
  3. ↑ http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/aqr/back-issues/22_1and2.cfm
  4. ↑ “Obama Raises Profile of Mixed race Americans”, San Francisco Chronicle, July 21, 2008, Tyche Hendricks.
  5. ↑ “Japanese American National Museum to Host 2nd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival,” Nichi Bei Times, May 21–27, 2009, p. 10.
  6. ↑ http://www.mixedrootsfest.org/about-the-festival/
  7. ↑ http://www.mixedremixed.org/about-mixed-remixed/
  8. ↑ The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books, February 2010).

External links

Authority control
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