Over at Reading Local, contributor Karen Munro interviews Heidi Durrow, author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky:

Q: Hi! Your novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, is based in part on a story you saw in a newspaper. Can you say a little about that story—what struck you about it, and how you approached writing about it?

A: I was heart-sick when I read the news story because it was about a terrible tragedy — a family had perished after falling from the rooftop of the housing project they lived in. Except there was a miracle. The girl, somehow, survived. I became a little obsessed about the incident — the newspapers asked how and why the accident had happened. I wanted to know something a little different. I wanted to know what would the girl’s survival look like? How would she forge a life for herself? I wanted to give her a voice and a future so that her life wouldn’t be defined by the tragedy.

Durrow is reading at the downtown Powell's tonight at 7:30 pm, and on the IFCC on Tuesday at 7. You can read my review of the book here. (I was a little lukewarm on it, but Durrow did win big points with me in the Reading Local interview by recommending Keri Hulme's The Bone People, which is one of my favorite books.)