Heather King is a writer, blogger and speaker. Raised on the coast of New Hampshire, she struggled with alcoholism—a period during which she made the ill-advised decision to attend law school—sobered up in 1987, quit her job as an attorney, and converted to Catholicism in 1996. She has written and recorded several slice-of-life commentaries for National Public Radio's All Things Considered and is the author of numerous essays and several memoirs. King is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk University Law School. She lives in Los Angeles where she maintains the blog HEATHER KING: Mystery, Smarts Laughs. She contributes the monthly column "Credible Witnesses" to the Catholic magazine Magnificat. Her essays in Magnificat, among them "The Sacred Heart of Jesus," have won many awards from the Catholic Press Association . Since May, 2014, she has written a weekly column on arts, culture, faith and life called for ANGELUS, the archdiocesan newspaper of Los Angeles. Her subjects range from noir crime novelist Raymond Chandler to classical pianistGlenn Gould, ultra marathon running, outsider art, the secret staircases of Silver Lake, obsessive gardeners, opera, ballet, tightrope walking, and coke-addicted figure-skaters. The column received an In 2017, "The Crux" was awarded in the category "Best Regular Column: Spiritual Life." Also in 2017, King was awarded a for her National Catholic Reporter essay Parched, King's memoir about addiction as spiritual thirst, was chosen as a "Most Memorable Memoir" by Publishers Weekly in their "Year in Books" 2005, and was selected by as one of their Top Ten Addiction Memoirs. Her book won Book of the Year 2018 from the National Association of Catholic Publishers, as well as Third Place that same year in the "Best Spiritual Memoir" category. Her essays have appeared in the Best American Spiritual Writing series 2002, 2005, and 2008. She was the recipient of a "Notable Essay" citation in the Best American Essays series 2000, 2008, 2013, and 2015. She has received writing fellowships from the Djerassi Center for the Arts, the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Ucross Foundation.
