Asma Nabeel

Asma Nabeel was a Pakistani writer, best known for her short stories in the Urdu language. She was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1979. She was the daughter of educator Farazeh Durrani and lawyer Ashtar Ausaf Ali, the Attorney General for Pakistan from 2016 to 2018 and again from May 2022. She learned to cook from her father, her grandmother, and her family's cook, Qadir. She immigrated to America at age 18 to attend the Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 2011. She began her culinary career as a junior sous chef at Café Centro in New York City. In 2012, she won an episode of Chopped ( Season 12, episode 2, "A Guts Reaction") on the Food Network. She continued her career in New York City, becoming the youngest executive sous chef at Stella 34 Trattoria at Macy's Herald Square, and then the executive sous chef at La Fonda del Sol. In 2017, she was a contestant on Top Chef: Colorado. Although she finished in seventh place, she was voted the fan favorite. After competing on Top Chef, Ali was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma and underwent surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in January 2018. After undergoing chemotherapy, she was initially declared cancer-free, and in April 2018, she cooked in public at the Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival. However, in October 2018, in a personal essay published by Bon Appétit titled I’m a Chef with Terminal Cancer. This Is What I’m Doing with the Time I Have Left, Ali reported that her cancer had returned and become terminal. She wrote that “the cancer cells my doctors believed had vanished are back with a vengeance in my left hip and femur bone.” She added that her oncologist told her she likely had “a year to live, with or without the new chemotherapy regimen.” She died in Lahore on 1 July 2021, at the age of 42. She was buried in Lahore in July 2021. In April 2019, Ali was posthumously awarded a James Beard Foundation Award for her essay. Her memoir, Savor: A Chef's Hunger for More, published in October 2022 and co-authored with Tarajia Morrell, received a James Beard Foundation Award in June 2023. She is regarded as one of the most influential and respected writers in the history of Pakistani literature.