Dr. Durre Shahwar is a writer and researcher with a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University, where she also teaches on creative writing and literature undergraduate modules. Durre’s PhD was funded by South West and Wales, Doctoral Training Partnership (AHRC) and was on autofiction as a genre for writing about marginalised and hybrid identities and experiences. She is an Associate Fellow of Higher Education.
Durre is the co-editor of Gathering, an essay anthology on nature, climate, the landscape by women of colour (out now with 404 Ink). She is currently working on her first sole-authored book, a sample of which was shortlisted and highly commended for the Morley Lit Prize 2022.
Durre is a Deputy Editor for Wasafiri Magazine, where she was previously a Writer-in-Residence. She was the recipient of a Future Wales Fellowship in 2022, undertaking a year of creative research around climate justice and art, accumulating in a group exhibition at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in 2023. Her visual work has also been part of G39’s ‘We Ran Together’ exhibition. Established in 2017, Durre is the co-founder of ‘Where I’m Coming From’, the first open mic collective for writers of colour in Wales. In the past, she has been a part of Hay Festival Writers at Work, BBC Writersroom Wales Development Programme, an Artist in Residence at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, and a Located Residency Artist with National Theatre Wales.
Durre’s work overlaps the boundaries between non-fiction, essay, autofiction, short story, and experimental hybrid writing 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. Her short play 'On My Terms' was performed at Edinburgh Fringe.
Research and Writing Interests: nature writing, language, autofiction, decolonising creative writing, intersectionality, class, race, migration, gender, mental health, ekphrastic writing,
GATHERING: WOMEN OF COLOUR ON NATURE
“Traditional narratives of how we approach nature have also been shaped by ideas of ‘conquering’ or ‘overcoming’ nature and the unknown that also shaped my relationship to it….of pushing hard and beyond my limits because I didn’t want to be held back by my class, gender, background, skin colour, mental health. Everyday metaphors of ‘moving mountains’ and ‘climbing mountains’ that create measurements of our effort and success also fed into this narrative…they still speak to an ableist and colonialist way of approaching the landscape.”
Co-edited by Durre, Gathering brings together essays by women of colour across the UK writing about their relationships with nature, in a genre long-dominated by male, white, middle-class writers. In redressing this imbalance, this moving collection considers climate justice, neurodiversity, mental health, academia, inherited histories, colonialism, whiteness, music, hiking and more. These personal, creative, and fierce essays will broaden both conversations and horizons about our living world, encouraging readers to consider their own experience with nature and their place within it.