Durre Shahwar is a writer, researcher, editor, and an artist with a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University. She is an Associate Fellow of Higher Education and teaches and facilitates creative writing and literature seminars and workshops. Durre’s PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and looked at the nuances and misconceptions of autofiction and how it might be used to write about marginalised identities, particularly from a Welsh-Pakistani perspective. Durre is currently working on her first book, a sample of which was highly commended for the Morley Lit Prize. She is represented by Rory Clarke at Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

Durre is the co-editor of Gathering, an essay anthology on nature, climate, the landscape by women of colour (2024, 404 Ink). She was formerly a Deputy Editor at Wasafiri Magazine, where she was previously a Writer-in-Residence. She was also a Writer-in-Residence for Literature Wales’ ‘Natur a Ni’ project, facilitating community workshops to explore how marginalised communities form connections with nature. Between 2022-2023, Durre was the recipient of a Future Wales Fellowship, undertaking a year of creative research around climate justice and art, accumulating in a group exhibition at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.

Durre’s written work overlaps the boundaries between non-fiction, essay, autofiction, short story, prose poetry, and has been published widely, most prominently: Wasafiri, Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class (Dead Ink Books), We Shall Fight Until We Win (404 Ink), Welsh (Plural) (Repeater Books), Homes for Heroes 100: Council Estate Memories (Bristol Festival of Ideas), Artes Mundi, Sister-hood Magazine, Visual Verse, Azeema Mag, Poetry Wales. Her short play ‘On My Terms’ was performed at Edinburgh Fringe.