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SHANDANA DURRANI is Senior Editor at Cigar Aficionado, a men's lifestyle publication, in New York City. (Please save your jokes about Cigar Asphyxionado; she's heard them all.) Born in Lahore, Pakistan, to a Punjabi mother and Afghan father, Shandana and her family emigrated in 1973 to a place that they thought would remind them of their homeland: Detroit, Michigan. There, the Durranis found themselves in the bosom of a very large and welcoming native Pakistani community. Detroit, a.k.a. The Motor City, was also the home of Vincent Furnier, a.k.a. Alice Cooper, and Ted Nugent, a.k.a. The Nuge, neither of whom are actually Pakistani, but whose timeless melodies and trenchant lyrics endeared them to many a young South Asian-American. Shandana and her two sisters were raised in the suburb of Warren, a place nowhere near as boring as its name (the same couldn't be said for the neighboring townships of Clinton and Gore). She graduated with honors in 1988 from East Detroit High School, which, despite its name, is located in the suburb of Eastpointe. Her ten-year high school reunion 1 1/2 years ago bore an amazing resemblance to the film Grosse Pointe Blank, only much, much scarier. Shandana attended Syracuse University, often referred to as "the Boston College of upstate New York" by pithy freshmen. In between spending long hours working towards a bachelor's degree with distinction in Sociology, she served as a features writer for the Daily Orange student newspaper, a freshman orientation advisor, an assistant to the directors of the Office of Residence Life and a co-ed tennis team member. After graduation in 1992, Shandana moved to New York City, where she began her magazine career as an editorial assistant at Racquet magazine, a tennis lifestyle publication. In 1993, she was hired as a freelance editorial assistant at Premiere magazine and later that same year, she joined the staff of Cigar Aficionado magazine as editorial assistant. She has also written for Glamour, Wine Spectator, Masala and New Traveler.com. and in 1999, helped edit Mark Mathabane's debut novel Ubuntu, a thriller set in post-Apartheid South Africa. Shandana enjoys spending time with friends and family and playing tennis and basketball. She also loves to travel and has visited such diverse locales as New Zealand, Greece and Ohio. However, her two passions remain movies and writing; having written several feature-length screenplays, she hopes to one day see her name in the credits of a major motion picture, or at the very least, one of those cheesy direct-to-video thrillers you find in the bargain bins at Blockbuster for $6.99. Shandana lives in Manhattan, where men are men and some women are men, too. -30- |
