Hannah Khalil FRSL

Hannah Khalil is Writer in Residence at Bristol Old Vic (2025-2030). Recent work includes Love Omar (Theatro Technis, London), My English Persian Kitchen which had a sell out run at the Traverse as part of the Edinburgh Festival in August 2024, then transferred to Soho Theatre, London. It returned to London in autumn 2025 followed by a UK and Irish tour. 

Hannah was the 2022 Resident Writer at Shakespeare’s Globe, while there the Globe produced three of her plays: Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights, Henry VIII and The Fir Tree (2021 and 2022). Hannah’s other stage plays include A Museum in Baghdad (Royal Shakespeare Company) which marked the first play by a woman of Arab heritage on a main stage at the RSC,  Interference (National Theatre of Scotland) and the critically acclaimed Scenes from 68* Years - shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award (Arcola Theatre, London, 2016). Her first libretto for a new Key Stage 2 Opera called The Great Stink toured the UK in 2024 with English Touring Opera. 

Radio work includes: Wireless War, Tipping Point, Margaret White and the Alcoran of Mahomet and a forthcoming adaptation of The Woman in White all for BBC Radio 4. 

Hannah held the Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University, Philadelphia, USA in 2021 and was a Creative Fellow of the Samuel Beckett Archive for 2021/2022. She co-conceived and acted as co-artistic director for the Not Beckett international festival of new plays. She is currently an Honorary Fellow of Birkbeck University. In 2022 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is an Associate Artist of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Forthcoming work includes The Farmer’s Wife a new play inspired by Helen Rebanks' memoir which opens at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick in September 2026 and a new Key stage 2 Opera which will tour the UK with English Touring Opera in 2027.