Kareem Fahmy is a Canadian-born playwright and director of Egyptian descent. He is co-founder of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab and has a M.F.A in Theatre directing from Columbia University.
He received the 2022 Woodward/Newman Playwriting Award for American Fast, a NYSCA/NYFA Playwriting Fellowship, the Janet Sloane Literature Residency at Yaddo, is a two-time finalist for the National Showcase of New Plays, and was named a Rising Leader of Color by TCG.
His play A Distinct Society received a co-world premiere at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and Pioneer Theatre. American Fast had a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere at Artists Repertory Theatre, City Theatre, and InterAct Theatre. Dodi & Diana, an O’Neill NPC Finalist, received a world premiere at Colt Coeur. Other plays include Pareidolia, The In-Between, and an adaptation of the acclaimed novel The Yacoubian Building.
Fahmy has received Fellowships at Sundance Theatre Lab, The Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The O’Neill, Second Stage, Soho Rep, Lincoln Center, and New York Theatre Workshop.
At MacDowell, he wrote over a hundred first-draft pages of a new play entitled Fountains of Youth. The play, which is being supported by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, explores the interconnected of homophobia and Islamaphobia and centers on a group of gay men and what happens in their lives when one of them mysteriously vanishes. Kareem will continue work on this play as part of a residency at Canada's Stratford Festival.
