Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (born 1968) is an American memoirist, playwright and fiction writer living in New York City. He won a 2010 Whiting Award for his memoir, "When Skateboards Will Be Free". He is the author of two story collections, "American Estrangement" (2021) and "Brief Encounters With the Enemy," which was short-listed for the 2014 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. He serves on the board of directors for the New York Foundation for the Arts. Background. Sayrafiezadeh was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Iranian father, Mahmoud Sayrafiezadeh, and an American Jewish mother, Martha  Harris, both of whom were members of the Socialist Workers Party. He was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His maternal uncle is the novelist Mark Harris. He lives in New York City. Work. Fiction. Sayrafiezadeh wrote the 2013 short-story collection "Brief Encounters With the Enemy." His stories and personal essays have been published in" The New Yorker,"" The Paris Review"," The New York Times, "Granta, and McSweeney's. Memoir. Sayrafiezadeh wrote the 2009 memoir "When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood" about his childhood in the Socialist Workers Party. Plays. Sayrafiezadeh's plays include "New York  is Bleeding, Autobiography of a Terrorist, All Fall Away," and "Long Dream in Summer". They have been produced or read at South Coast Repertory, New York Theatre Workshop, The Humana Festival of New American Plays, and at The Sundance Theatre Lab.