Farai Chideya is one of the famous names in American multimedia and radio industry. She is also a journalist and a novelist. Chideya was born on July 27 of the year 1969, in Baltimore, Maryland of the United States. She belongs to black ethnicity as she is part African and part American. Her father is from Zimbabwe and mother from Baltimore, Maryland.
So, her family is of mixed race. She was brought up by her parents in Maryland. She produced and hosted a series of radio specials on politics called ‘Pop and Politics with Farai Chideya’ for 15 years.
Chideya holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in English Literature. She graduated from Harvard in the year 1990. Since the year 2012 Chideya has held the position of a distinguished writer at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism University of New York University. There she teaches courses in media economics and radio production. She also works as a senior writer for the media house FiveThirtyEight economics, politics and sports blogging website.
She currently hosts and produces a podcast called ‘one with Farai’, for Public Radio International. In the podcast, she interviews different individuals with a range of stories and opinions. Chideya has interviewed guests which include Alec Ross, Harris-Perry, and Urvashi Vaid.
Chideya was distinguished as the most honored alumni from Harvard in 2000. Her academic life includes being a visiting professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California and professional in residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, she is a distinguished writer in residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, New York.
Chideya is also the president and founder of one of the earliest pop culture blogs in the US which are called PopandPolitics.com. Besides her radio and online journalism, Chideya also appears as a political analyst on HBO, ABC News, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News and BET.
In May 2009, Chideya published her first novel, Kiss the Sky. The book contains the details of the life of a black female rock musician making a career comeback in New York. The book`s plot takes place just months before the incident of 9/11.
Chideya is also the author of three non-fiction books about race and politics: Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters, Don't Believe the Hype and The Color of Our Future.
Chideya has won various awards for her work such as an Enterprise reporting award in 2007 from the National Association of Black Journalists for a piece on Skid Row. Which was a special award from the Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association in 2008 for reporting about AIDS; an honoree award from the Black Entertainment and Telecommunications Association in 2004; a North Star Award for covering communities of color in 2006.
Besides that, she has also won a New York Public Library’s Best Books for Teens for The Color of Our Future in 2000, WIN Young Women of Achievement Award in 1996. A MOBE IT Innovator Award in 2001 and an Alternet New Media Hero Award for PopandPolitics.com in; an EdPress award for education reporting done for Newsweek in the year 1994 and a GLAAD award from Spin Magazine in 1995.
Moving into her personal life, she has kept her details very secretive. We do not know if she is married or has a husband and children. We don't know if she is divorced. Also, there is no detail about her height in the media. Her net worth is said to be above $3 million. More about her bio can be read on wiki pages like Wikipedia and other sites.
