Parvati Shallow Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Parvati Shallow is an accomplished author, mother, and a five-time competitor on the television show Survivor, which she has also won.

She has advanced certifications in yoga, meditation, and breath work. She is also a student of different healing/therapeutic modalities that include structural integration, acupuncture, Somatic Experiencing, nutrition, sound healing, IRF, IFS, hypnotherapy, and more.

She says that when it comes to her life, she’s failed more than she has won, making mistakes, winning a million dollars and losing it too, going through marriage and divorce, becoming a wife and a single mother. She has also gone through grief, losing a member of her family to addiction, doing it all while in the public eye.

The author describe herself as a student of life and her experience as her classroom, saying that growth is not linear but instead messy and wild. Living somewhere beyond just survival mode is something that she says requires support, love, willingness to embrace the mess, and an intelligent loving presence that is able to give you a hand with it all to get up and out of it.

Parvati says that she loves beach picnics, sunny days, and blasting Miley Cyrus while going for a hike in Santa Monica. She loves taking spontaneous international trips as well as staying home with her daughter and making glitter art. She likes to play Settlers of Catan but also notes that she gets very competitive and sometimes likes to eat chocolate for breakfast.

Born on September 21, 1982, many people know Shallow from her time on Survivor. She has won Survivor two times: first on Survivor: Micronesia– Fans vs. Favorites in 2008 and then on Australian Survivor in 2024 on Australia V. the World, where she represented the United States. Her first television appearance was on Survivor: Cook Islands in 2006, where she ended up placing sixth. She has also been in Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains and Survivor: Winners at War.

Her strategic game play on the show earned her the nickname of ‘Black Widow’. Parvati used her social skills and flirting to get allies and control the game quietly. It would be a moniker that has followed her through other appearances on reality television and Parvati has embraced it in her professional life, using it in her life coach role and in her course ‘How Villains Are Made’.

Parvati grew up in Florida in a commune that practice Hinduism, something that contributed to her first name. She would later say that the commune was ‘high-control’ as well as a ‘cult’. Her family, which included her three siblings, would leave Florida and relocated to Marietta, Georgia when she was eleven.

The author would graduate from the University of Georgia with her Bachelor of Journalism degree and belonged to the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority. She tried out for The Real World in 2003 but did not make it. In 2004, she started competing in boxing and created a non-profit with other boxers called Knockouts for Girls.

Parvati moved to West Hollywood from Georgia before her appearance on Survivor. She first auditioned for The Amazing Race with a friend and CBS producers approached her with the opportunity to be part of Survivor, which Shallow accepted.

Parvati is one of the first five people inducted into the Survivor Hall of Fame in 2010. She is one of ten who have made it to Final Tribal Council more than once, and has won online polls asking who was the greatest contestant in the history of the show (the polls were conducted by Survivor player Rob Cesternino).

Shallow has also been voted the fourth greatest contestant in the history of the series in an official issue of CBS Watch that commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of Survivor. She was also the highest-ranking female contestant. She was named 1st in a 2017 Entertainment Weekly poll where fans of the show ranked the 34 winners and named one of the top ten favorite winners of the show by host Jeff Probst in 2014, who named her as being one of his ‘top four’ favorite female winners. He would later go on to all her the ‘best winner ever’ prior to the premiere of Winners at War in 2020.

Parvati has also gone on to appear in other reality television series. She was on The Traitors for its second season and has been on Deal or No Deal Island’s second season. Shallow has appeared in the movie Into the Blue 2 and hosted a third season for the web-series ‘Around the World for Free’.

The author would date John Fincher in 2014, another player from the show who had been on Survivor: Samoa. They were engaged in 2017 in January and would be married later that year, having a daughter together. She filed for divorce in 2021.

Today she lives in Los Angeles and works as a yoga teacher. She would come out on Instagram as queer in 2023, also announcing that she was in a relationship with Mae Martin.

Om the Otter is a children’s book written by Parvati Shallow, Beth Cooper, Rachel Robinson, and Paula Van Loan. It was first released for readers to enjoy in 2020.

This is an adorable book that also talks about how you can be there for someone who is going through difficult feelings and a tale of compassion and friendship. Om is an otter who uses breathing exercises to teach readers the power of mindfulness. Read this book with your favorite smaller person!

Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power is a 2025 memoir by Parvati Shallow. The book shares its name with a podcast and is a unique story that you won’t want to miss.

Parvati was just 25 when she became famous and won a million dollars from Survivor. She was successful, but despite this, the trauma from her past paired with the attention from being in the public eye kept her in a cycle of surviving. Full of fear and shame, she saw her self-confidence go down and her trust in herself get eroded.

Going through some painful events in life that included the passing of her younger brother and a divorce, Parvati would end up finding herself on a course of healing that has the potential to wake her up to her source of power and reset the course of her life.

Inside this book, she share the stories that let her take difficult moments and transform them into sources to be more empowered. Follow along with her journey from growing up on a commune in Florida to making it out of the South and inside casting rooms in LA and more by getting a copy of Nice Girls Don’t Win for a memoir that you will read cover to cover!