Heidi was born in Malaysia, and spent part of her childhood growing up in Seattle, Washington and Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. After leaving school, she studied law at Nottingham University, obtained a postgraduate degree in corporate law, and after taking her Bar exams, eventually worked as a maritime lawyer in a London law firm. In 2007, she returned home and began to write fiction.
Heidi is now an award winning author of stories inspired by Southeast Asia for both children and adults. Her first short story Johan the Honey Hunter, won the regional prize for the Eye Level Children’s Literature Award in 2012. Since then, she has written and published short stories, a historical middle-grade series, readers and picture books including The Malay Tale of the Pig King, which is based on Hikayat Raja Babi. In 2017, her screenplay for Batik Girl won the Intellectual Property Creators’ Challenge (the IPCC Award) and was made into an award winning short animated film by R&D Studio and Tudidut Studio. Batik Girl has gone on to receive the Honorable Mention in Audience Favorites award at Florida Animation Festival, Best Animated Short Film prize at the Festival de Largos y Cortos de Santiago 2019 in Chile, as well as Gold Medal in the Regional categoryat the 20th Digicon6 Asia, Japan.
Heidi is now fulfilling her ambition of collecting and adapting the fairy tales, folklore, myths, legends, epics, wonder and magic tales from all around the Nusantara region, and has started a series of videos, Nusantara Fairy Tales with Heidi, in her mission to spread these tales. Check out her YouTube channel (Heidi Shamsuddin) to listen to these amazing stories.
