Yasmin Joseph

Yasmin Joseph was born and raised in Camden, North London.^[1][2] She is of Caribbean heritage, with a Dominican-Jamaican mother and a Vincentian father.^[3] Her grandparents had come to the UK fas part of the Windrush Generation. One of her grandmothers worked as a nurse.^[4]

Joseph studied English and drama at university.^[3][4]

Before becoming a playwright, Joseph worked in a variety of roles in the theatre sector. In 2015, she interned at New York Theatre Workshop in audience outreach and engagement.^[1][3]

Jospeh has credited her participation in Soho Theatre's Young Writers' Lab as her first experience with playwriting. Pinch, which she wrote during this time,^[3][5] was longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award in 2015.^[6] Having previously worked as resident assistant producer at Theatre503, Joseph applied and was selected for the theatre's 503Five scheme, becoming one of its resident writers in 2017. Joseph's debut play, J'Ouvert, was developed during this residency and subsequently premiered at Theatre503 in 2019.^[7][8] The production was transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End in 2021, making Joseph the second Black British female playwright to have her work staged in the West End (after Natasha Gordon).^[9] J'ouvert was inspired by her childhood experiences, when her family was actively involved in creating carnival floats and taking part in the costume parade every summer.^[4][10]

She has written for the Royal Court Theatre (as a winner of the Channel 4 Playwrights scheme),^[8] Soho Theatre, the Actors Touring Company, and Clean Break.^[8] She used her grandmother's experience as a nurse when she was hired by The Place Theatre in Bedford to write a drama based on memoirs compiled by the Retired Caribbean Nurses Association.^[4][11]

Joseph is an alumnus of Sister Pictures' writer-in-residence scheme.^[12] She has worked on writing screenplays, developing projects for Sister Pictures, and was a co-writer on the period drama series A Thousand Blows (released 2025 on Hulu and Disney +).^[13][14]

In 2022, Joseph contributed a poem, Who Said Summer Was Fun!, for the anthology Joyful Joyful: Stories Celebrating Black Voices, edited by Dapo Adeola and published by Pan MacMillan.^[15][16]

She is based in London.^[10]