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Season 4, Episode 6: Award-winning Writer Lori Tharps, author of Same Family Different Colors

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lori tharps bookRECORDED 10/3/16: Don’t miss my conversation with award-winning writer Lori Tharps about her latest non-fiction book Same Family Different Colors.  Lori has been a leading voice in conversations about racial and cultural connection and difference. Listen to her talk about this much-needed book and the much-needed conversations it is sure to spark!  Listen here or download the episode on itunes.-Heidi Durrow

 

 

I talk with @loritharps about her new EXCELLENT book Same Family, Different Colors #multiracial

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lori collage black and whitelori tharps photoLori L. Tharps is an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University, an award-winning author, freelance journalist and popular speaker.

Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she left the Midwest in search of an authentic life experience beginning with four years at Smith College. (Technically, one of those years was spent studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain.). After graduating from Smith, with a B.A. in comparative education and Spanish, Tharps spent two years working on Madison Avenue at one of New York City’s top-ten public relations agencies. While there she worked tirelessly writing press releases and organizing press events for a certain candy company, powdered soup distributor and a well-known maker of dry toast. After realizing she’d never succeed as a PR executive, Tharps entered Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and has been writing her way through the world ever since.

After graduation from Columbia, Tharps was a staff reporter at Vibe magazine and then a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly. She has written for Ms., Glamour, Suede, Vogue Black, Caribbean Life, Grid Philadelphia, xoJane.com and Essence magazines. She has also written for The Columbia Journalism Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, TheRoot.com and Ebony.com. Her work can also be read in the anthologies, Young Wives Tales: Stories of Love and Partnership (Seal Press), Naked: Black Women Bare All About their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips and Other Parts (Perigee), Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine (FSG) and Women: Images & Realities. A Multicultural Anthology (Avalon). Tharps is the author of two works of nonfiction – Hair Story:Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (St. Martin’s Press) and Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain (Atria) – and the novel, Substitute Me(Atria).

Currently Tharps lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three children and she is working on a new book exploring the role of skin color politics in American families. Tharps doesn’t have a dog, but if she did, his name would be Otis. She has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. Tharps is (almost) fluent in Spanish and can say I love you in seven languages.

Season 3, Episode 23: Debut Novelist Phenom Natashia Deon

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RECORDED 7/11/16: Please don’t miss my talk with Natashia Deon whose debut novel, Grace, has announced her as a major new novelist to watch! We talked about her book, but also the need for stories and the relevance of the stories of her novel still in this traumatic and difficult time.  You can listen here or download it on itunes.-Heidi Durrow

.@heididurrow interviews the amazing @natashiadeon about her debut novel! #multiracial

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natashia deonNatashia Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellowship and her debut novel, Grace, debuted June 2016 with Counterpoint Press.

An attorney, writer, law professor, and creator of the popular L.A.-based reading series Dirty Laundry Lit, Deón was recently named one of L.A.’s “Most Fascinating People” by L.A. Weekly.

natashia deon bookDeón has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Rumpus, The Feminist Wire, Asian American Lit Review, Rattling Wall, B O D Y and other places.

She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside–Palm Desert, has two perfect children, and a lovely husband whom she met while living and working in Kent, England.

Mixed Experience History Month 2016: Samuel Cornish, journalist and religious leader

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mixed race historySamuel Cornish (1795-1858) was born to free parents of mixed race.

Cornish was ordained in 1822 and established the first black Presbyterian church in New York City.

He was an editor of Freedom’s Journal, the first black owned and operated newspaper in the country.  In 1833, he became one of the founding memebers of the interracial American Anti-Slavery Society.  Cornish died in 1858.-Heidi Durrow

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for archived profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015.

Season 3, Episode 9: Traveling Abroad While Mixed & Other Musings

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the mixed experience by heidi durrowRECORDED 1/11/16: In the first episode of the season, I took the opportunity to muse a little bit about my recent trip to a remote island and my search for a “tribe” that looks like me.  Also, I share a recent blog post about my thoughts on the state of Multiracial America.  Is this a multiracial or biracial moment or is it a multiracial or biracial movement?  I say there is no multiracial movement (at least not yet).  What do you say?  Listen here or download the episode from itunes.-Heidi Durrow

Traveling abroad while #mixedrace or #multiracial & trying to find my “tribe”.

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Season 3, Episode 10: Author Sunil Yapa, Connecting Multiracial Experience with Global Identity

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Sunil Yapa Mixed Race WriterYour Hear is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

RECORDED 1/18/16: You know how you meet someone and you think: this person’s doing some really important work.  That was my impression of Sunil Yapa when I met him almost 8 years ago.  So it was particularly exciting to read his book, Your Heart Is A Muscle the Size of a Fist, and see the incredible reception it’s already getting.  You are going to love this book.  And you’ll love hearing more about his journey as a writer and the inspiration for this great story.  You can listen here or download the episode from itunes! – Heidi Durrow

Listen to @heididurrow interview with debut novelist phenom @sunilyapa  #multiracial #mixedrace

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Sunil Yapa on Heidi Durrow podcast

Sunil Yapa by Beowulf Sheehan

Sunil Yapa holds a bachelor’s degree in economic geography from Penn State University and an MFA from Hunter College. The biracial son of a Sri Lankan father and mother from Montana, Yapa has lived around the world, including time in Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, and India, as well as London, Montreal, and New York City.

 

Season 2, Episode 23: Listener Spotlight Mixed Chick Peg Bolduc

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Peg 2015RECORDED 4/27/15: I was so excited to speak with Peg Bolduc, a listener and mixed chick.  We learned more about her upbringing as an adoptee and about her now adult family and how she has journeyed through identity through the years.   You can listen to the interview here or download it from itunes.-Heidi Durrow

The true story of a mixed chick adoptee seeking truth & creating a home for foster children. #multiracial

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Bolduc family 2013Peg Maus Bolduc is a 42 year old mixed chick, wife and mother of three amazing kids who is actively pursuing her dream of creating a place for foster children where they will be loved, nurtured and given every chance to create the life they want.

Peg is the biological daughter of a young, white American mother and a black father (who said he was from Trinidad) and was placed for adoption at birth. In March 2014 she was successfully reunited with her biological mother. Through DNA testing Peg discovered she is 34% African, 61% European and 5% West Asian (Middle East/Caucasus).

Listen to mixed Peg Bolduc talk about being an adoptee & her journey toward a whole identity. #multiracial

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Maus Family The Mixed Experience

Season 2, Episode 24: Mike Twitty, AfroCulinaria Blogger and Author

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michael-in-harlem-twoRECORDED 5/4/15: I was excited to talk with blogger and author Mike Twitty about his work, faith, food, and his forthcoming book The Cooking Gene.  He really breaks it down in terms of claiming the Mixed experience through food.  You don’t want to miss this interview.  You can listen here. Or download it on itunes.–Heidi Durrow

michael twitty kitchen_sepia_emailMichael Twitty, blogger at Afroculinaria, speaks with us. Twitty (@koshersoul) is a food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian , and historical interpreter personally charged with preparing, preserving and promoting African American foodways and its parent traditions in Africa and her Diaspora and its legacy in the food culture of the American South. Michael is a Judaic studies teacher from the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area and his interests include food culture, food history, Jewish cultural issues, African American history and cultural politics. Afroculinaria will highlight and address food’s critical role in the development and definition of African American civilization and the politics of consumption and cultural ownership that surround it.

Season 2, Episode 22: Pulitzer Prize Winner Tracy K. Smith & Her New Memoir

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tracysmithbookcoverRecorded 4/20/15: I was thrilled to speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith about her new memoir Ordinary Light.  I met Tracy many years ago at Bread Loaf and it’s been a joy to see her star rise.  She’s incredibly talented, warm and witty, and nice to boot.  Listen in to our conversation.  You’ll love her answer to the “What are you?” question.  And make sure you get her book as well!  You can listen to her interview here or download it from itunes—Heidi Durrow

I interviewed Pulitzer Prize Winner Tracy K. Smith!

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tracy smith poets and writersTRACY K. SMITH is the author of three acclaimed poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She has received a Whiting Writers’ Award and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and currently teaches at Princeton University.

When a poet of Tracy Smith’s considerable lyric talent turns her attention to prose, she sets the bar ever higher.” Julia Alvarez

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