Betty Shamieh is a playwright, author, screenwriter, and actor. Shamieh is the author of fifteen plays. In the 2007-2008 theatre season, her play THE BLACK EYED will have its New York premiere at New York Theatre Workshop and her play TERRITORIES will have its world premiere at the Magic Theatre. Shamieh was awarded a playwriting grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) to spend 2008 as a playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre. Her play AGAIN AND AGAINST had a reading as part of the New Work Now festival at the Public Theatre in November 2006 and a reading at the Royal Court Theatre in January 2007. THE BLACK EYED had its world premiere at the Magic Theatre in 2005 and its Greek premiere at the Theatre Fournos in Athens under the direction of Takis Tzamargias and translated by Athina Paraponiari. In 2007, her one-act play THE MACHINE was produced by Naked Angels and directed by Marisa Tomei. Shamieh’s off-Broadway debut as a playwright was the 2004 New Group premiere of ROAR on Theater Row, which was selected a New York Times Critics Pick. ROAR was directed by Tony-nominated Marion McClinton and starred Annabella Sciorra and Sarita Choudhury. As an actress, Shamieh performed in her play of monologues CHOCOLATE IN HEAT at its sold out premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2001, two subsequent extended off-off Broadway runs, and at over twenty universities and venues throughout the country. Shamieh received an Honorable Mention for her screenplay ANONYMOUS from the Third Annual Writers Network Competition and mentored many young writers as a screenwriting professor at Marymount Manhattan College. Her writings have appeared in American Theater magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, and Mizna. Shamieh's contributions to theatre and literature have not gone unnoticed. Her life and work has been the subject of features in the New York Times, Time Out New York, American Theatre magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, the Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune. A cartoon of ROAR appeared in the New Yorker’s Goings on about Town section. Shamieh has been awarded a Sundance Theatre Institute residency, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship, New Dramatists Van Lier Fellowship, Ford Foundation grant, Yaddo residency, Arts International Grant, and Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy. She was selected as the 2004-05 Clifton Visiting Artist at Harvard University and is currently serving on the playwriting advisory board for the New York Foundation for the Arts. Shamieh is a graduate of Harvard University and the Yale School of Drama. In 2005-06, Shamieh was a Playwriting Fellow at the Harvard/Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. She is currently working on a commission from Time Warner/Second Stage Theatre and her first novel.