Heidi W. Durrow is the New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, which received writer Barbara Kingsolver's 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change, and was 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 recently named Durrow as one of its Power 100 Leaders of 2010, and she was nominated for a 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Debut. 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-race experience.  She is an occasional essay contributor to National Public Radio, and her writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Literary Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Callaloo, Poem/Memoir/Story, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Essence, and Newsday.