Durre Shahwar, an assistant editor at Wales Arts review wraps up her residency this month with some final thoughts on mental health month and her future aims for the project. Accompanied by an audio clip by Denn Yearwood. Throughout 2017 artists, including Durre Shahwar will take a leading creative role in what Wales Arts Review publishes, centring their skills on a challenging project over the course of a month. We were inundated with applications, receiving hundreds of emails about the positions, and it was no easy task whittling down all that talent to this final eleven. Our team of six editors debated long into the night, and in the end, we decided on a collection of people who we most want to work with, and whose work excites us. We think you will be excited by them too.
Durre Shahwar is a writer, speaker, and PhD Researcher whose work explores the themes of identity, class, queerness, gender, and mental health. The range varies from essays, short stories, monologues, theatre pieces and everything in between. Her work has been published in various magazines and anthologies, notably: Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class (Dead Ink Books), We Shall Fight Until We Win (404 Ink), Homes For Heroes 100 (Festival of Ideas). Durre is currently doing a PhD in Creative Writing at Cardiff University and working towards her first book of narrative non-fiction about South Asian identities in Wales.
In order to listen to Wales Arts Review’s Artists in Resident for May, Durre Shahwar’s final thoughts take a look through the official Soundcloud for Wales Arts Review. This audio clips also includes an accompaniment by Denn Yearwood.
Durre Shahwar has used her residency to highlight the importance of mental health awareness, as well as global movements such as mental health awareness month and week. Through the medium of sound and written words, Shahwar has offered a new perspective into understanding the importance of mental health, and how hiding your true emotions can, in turn, affect your physical body too.
If you’d like to read the other pieces by Shahwar as part of her residency, take a look at this article.
Go to the Artists in Residents article if you’d like to look through the pieces by the other selected artists that have also taken part in this new series.
This is the final contribution by Durre Sarhwar as part of the Artists in Residence series.
