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Heidi W. Durrow, a graduate of Stanford University, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Yale Law School, is a fiction writer and public speaker. Heidi’s writing focuses on issues of multiracial and multicultural identity. She is the recipient of a Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Creative Artist Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society. Heidi has won top honors in the Lorian Willamette Award for Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, Essence magazine, and the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism.

Heidi is available to do readings of her work as well as to teach creative writing workshops. As a former Cravath, Swaine & Moore litigator, she is available to speak on multiracial identity and the law.

Full Name

Heidi W Durrow

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LITWORK

Light-skinned-ed Girl
(Under submission). Excerpts available in Alaska Quarterly review and The Literary Review.

Heidi's novel, Light-skinned-ed Girl is inspired by a real event in which a mother's twisted love led to a horrific result. It is the story of the daughter of Rachel, a Danish immigrant and a black G.I. who is the only survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict, African-American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a racially-divided Northwest city. There--forced to suppress her overwhelming grief--Rachel struggles to reinvent herself in order to find a place in a mostly black community, where her light-brown skin, blue eyes and beauty bring a constant stream of mixed attention her way. Interwoven with Rachel's voice are the voices of Jamie (a neighborhood boy who witnesses the accident) and Laronne (a friend of Rachel's mother). Rachel's tragedy comes to define their lives and each sets out on a quest to unravel the mystery of Rachel's last morning on the Chicago rooftop. As Rachel matures, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to hide the truth of her past from herself. It is only with the help of Jamie and Laronne that Rachel ultimately confronts the truth of the day her family fell from the sky.

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