Sharareh Drury

I’m an award-winning entertainment reporter and editor who has been passionate about covering all things pop culture for over 10 years. I’ve worked across a plethora of digital and print outlets including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, PEOPLE, Entertainment Weekly, Culturess and E! News. As an Associate Features Editor for Variety, much of my work revolved around film festivals, seasonal events, and awards season coverage, as well as overseeing and enhancing several of Variety's annual impact reports, and planning engaging and impactful web versions for all Focus stories in the magazine. At The Hollywood Reporter, I covered daily breaking news, contributed to THR's Heat Vision blog, and collaborated with print and web staff to develop the web rollout for each week's print issue. At the helm of Culturess, I increased site traffic (within the first six months of leading content strategy, the site hit a record 2M pageviews), led awards season and convention coverage, and co-hosted video segments with sister sites such as UndeadWalking.com and WinterisComing.net. As an Iranian American journalist, I have made a point wherever I work to uplift diverse and inclusive storytelling, and highlight marginalized and underrepresented communities. A few examples include my “Dune” feature for Variety that detailed the lack of Middle Eastern and North African inclusion in speaking roles for Denis Villeneuve's adaptations plus objections from the MENA community on how the recent films diminished the book's MENA influences. For The Hollywood Reporter, I interviewed South Asian creatives about the controversial history of "The Simpsons" character Apu. In addition to my work across digital and print journalism, I have served as a guest lecturer for journalism students at USC, Chapman and NYU. I am a graduate of the USC Annenberg with a degree in broadcast and digital journalism. I am also a member of GALECA and AMEJA.