Sadia Shepard is a Pakistani American

Pakistani American

A Pakistani American is any citizen or resident of the United States who has Pakistani heritage.- History in the United States :Muslim immigrants from areas that are now part of Pakistan have been migrating to America and first entered the United States as early as the eighteenth century, working...

 filmmaker and author based in New York City. She is the author of The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Lost Loves, and a Sense of Home, which was published by The Penguin Press in 2008. She received a BA from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

, where she studied with Jeanine Basinger

Jeanine Basinger

Jeanine Basinger , a film historian, is Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies and Founder and Curator of The Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut....

, an MA from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and was a Fulbright Scholar to India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 in 2001. Shepard's writing has appeared in The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, The Forward

The Forward

The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...

, Wall Street Journal Magazine, and The Indian Express

The Indian Express

The Indian Express is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. It is published in Mumbai by Indian Express Group. After Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split in 1999 among his family members into two with the southern editions taking the name The New Indian Express, while the old...

. She has taught in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

In addition to writing, she produces documentary films. She produced R.J.Cutler's The September Issue

The September Issue

The September Issue is a 2009 American documentary film about the behind-the-scenes drama that follows editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and her staff during the production of the September 2007 issue of American Vogue magazine. The film is directed by R.J. Cutler and produced by Eliza Hindmarch and...

, a documentary portrait of the making of Vogue, which won the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

  and the Audience Award at the 2010 Cinema Eye Honors

Cinema Eye Honors

The Cinema Eye Honors is an award which celebrates nonfiction films and filmmakers, recognizing the breadth of the genre and includes the crafts of cinematography, editing, producing, directing, etc. It was first presented at the IFC Center in New York City on March 18, 2008...

. Sadia lectures widely about growing up in a multi-faith home.

She is the daughter of an American father, architect Richard Shepard, and a Pakistani American mother - artist, designer and educator, Samina Quraeshi

Samina Quraeshi

Samina Quraeshi is an award-winning educator, designer, artist and author. She is the author of Legacy of the Indus, Lahore: the City Within, Legends of the Indus, and Sacred Spaces: A Journey with the Sufis of the Indus which was published by Peabody Museum Press in 2009 She was raised in Karachi,...

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