Yasmeen Hameed

Yasmeen Hameed is a celebrated Pakistani Urdu poet, translator, and educator with over three decades of experience in literature and the arts. She served as the Founding Director of the Gurmani Centre for South Asian Languages and Literature at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) from 2007 to 2016.

Yasmeen has published five acclaimed books of poetry. Her book, ‘Pakistani Urdu Verse’ (2010), was awarded the UBL/Jang Literary Excellence Award in 2012. She has compiled and edited ‘Daybreak: Writings on Faiz’ (2013) and ‘Naya Urdu Afsana’. Her poems have been published in translation in Granta, 112 Pakistan, and the anthology Modern Poetry of Pakistan. She was guest editor of Pakistani Literature (English), published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters, Islamabad, and has edited seven volumes of the journal, including two volumes of a special issue on women writers from Pakistan. Her book, ‘Junubi Asia ki Muntakhab Nazmein’ (poetry in translation, of sixteen South Asian languages) published in 2022 received three prestigious awards. the Jamil Jalibi Adabi Award, the Muhammad Hasan Askari Award by the Pakistan Academy of Letters and the UBL Award for excellence in literature and the arts. Her recent publication (2023) is a book of literary essays called Eik aur Rukh. She has also been honoured with the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz by the Government of Pakistan and the Fatima Jinnah Medal by the Government of Punjab.