Sharifa Yazmeen

Sharifa Yazmeen is an Egyptian-American playwright and theatre director. Two of her plays have been featured in The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays.

Early life Yazmeen was born in Saudi Arabia; her father is Egyptian and her mother is a White American.

Career She has an MFA in directing from Brown University.

In 2021, Yazmeen was the inaugural winner of the Barbara Whitman Award, which recognizes "a female, trans, or nonbinary early-career director who has demonstrated a unique vision in their work". Her 2023 direction of Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar was praised as using choices that created an "impending doom, horror movie-style" for the production. In 2024 she was one of two inaugural winners (with Violeta Picayo) of the Abe Burrows Award for Assistant Directors.

The University of Kansas Theatre produced Yazmeen's play The Devils Between Us in 2021; a professor there called the play "an engaging and transformative piece of storytelling". It is one of eight plays featured in the 2021 volume The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays. In the play, a trans Arab-American woman returns to her home town due to the death of her father. The introduction in Methuen's volume says the work "pushes back against homonationalist rhetoric that vilifies Muslims, de-exoticizing Egyptian heritage". The play follows three strangers: a transfeminine teenager, a builder and a Muslim immigrant. The play is included in the second volume of The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays. She was awarded a Jerome Fellowship by the Playwrights' Center (2025–2027).

Personal life Yazmeen is a transgender woman. Close to Home Bone by Bone Lilith's Tears

Directing credits Babel by Jacqueline Goldfinger, Contemporary American Theater Festival (2022) Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar, American Stage (2023)