afshan has been selected as one of the writers to take part in the BFI Flare and BAFTA mentoring programme. BFI Flare x BAFTA in partnership with BFI NETWORK, showcases and supports the next generation of LGBTQIA+ filmmakers working across film and television, with year-round mentoring, career coaching and development opportunities. Now in its eight year, the BFI Flare x BAFTA Mentoring […]
afshan has been selected as one of the associate artists for Oldham Coliseum. Over the 12 months, each artist will create at least one project in collaboration with Oldham Coliseum. afshan will be working on a new theatre piece around the role of activism within our communities. Oldham Coliseum Theatre is welcoming seven passionate and […]
SUPPORTING POWERFUL STORYTELLING: NEW PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE AND WARNERMEDIA CHAMPIONS MANCHESTER WRITERS The Royal Exchange Theatre and WarnerMedia welcomed three brilliantly talented emerging writers, afshan d’Souza-lodhi, Stefanie Reynolds and Samuel Rossiter, to their brand-new joint programme WRITERS EXCHANGE. Designed to support writers in Greater Manchester whose voices are currently under-represented in both industries, and who have experienced barriers to forging sustainable […]
assorted nasties and other love letters, a new project that afshan is working on involving short stories has been funded by The Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) fund. afshan will be spending time during the following year to develop her craft, attend workshops and work with a mentor on a new collection […]
afshan been selected to take part in the Melbourne City of Literature Virtual Writer Residency Programme in 2021. afshan will be a resident at the Stella PrizeEstablished in 2013, the Stella Prize is an annual literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing in all genres. It’s also an organisation pushing for cultural change, delivering initiatives to raise […]
afshan has a poem featured on Nymphs & Thugs new album Disarm Hate: We Will Keep On. The ‘Disarm Hate x Poetry’ project commissioned 16 of the world’s leading LGBTQ poets to respond to the ‘Disarm Hate‘ documentary. The resulting album was released digitally on 12 June, which marks five years since the Orlando massacre. […]
Tell Me Who We Were Before Life Made Us is a poetry anthology edited by Maz Hedgehog. Published in June 2021. buy direct from the publisher: https://www.3ofcups.co.uk/shop/bp7b87wb0vwn21ofqkfqaunexo17ya This is an anthology about imagined histories. Featuring poetry inspired by fairy tales, folklore, urban legends, creation myths, founding myths, Greek/Haitian/Indian/Mancunian myths. Here are our counterfactuals, our apocrypha, […]
afshan has an essay featured in Flipped Eye’s new anthology Not Quite Right For Us. A celebration of outsiderness and an ode to otherness, Not Quite Right For Us is a singular collection of stories, essays and poems by a dynamic mix of established and surging voices alike, edited by Sharmilla Beezmohun. Buy the book direct from […]
How to Eat Mangoes is a radical and sensual antidote to the narratives of destruction and death we are being fed by the mainstream media. How to Eat Mangoes takes stories about rishta aunties (matchmaking aunties), erotic fiction and the exotic mango to question how we love, how we heal and most importantly how we eat mangoes. While a rishta aunty tells us who and how we should love, sounds of mangoes being eaten punctuate her every word. We’re left with suggestions […]
afshan is the Sky Writes Writer-In-Residence for Rotherham. Sky Writes is a pioneering writing for television programme created by New Writing North and Sky Studios. The programme is looking to find new television writers from under-represented backgrounds and encourage them to develop their creative and professional skills. Sky Writes is produced by New Writing North […]
Afshan is Georgetown University’s labfellow for Global Performance and Politics The second cohort of Fellows started in 2020 and will complete their tenure in spring of 2022, overlapping with the incoming cohort and thus providing an opportunity for cross-pollination and further relationship building between the groups. This second cohort hails from Vietnam, South Africa, Kenya, […]
![[re: desire]](https://afshandl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/redesirebook-scaled.jpg)
ORDER the collection direct from the publisher here Afshan D’souza-Lodhi’s debut poetry collection re: desire explores the yearning to love, be loved and belong from a desi (South Asian) perspective. Her work sits on the intersections of flash fiction, poetry and script, echoing the hybridity of the worlds that many young British desis find themselves occupying. Drawing on […]
BOOK TICKETS FOR VAULT FESTIVAL HERE Santi & Naz are best friends living in a small village in pre-partition India. Their story spans between 1945 & 1949. When Naz is betrothed to an older man, the threat of separation for the young women looms large on the horizon. As the political situation around partition worsens […]
ORDER THE BOOK DIRECT FROM HOPE ROAD PUBLISHING Star-studded and beautifully written, this collection of diverse stories about love and desire by South Asian-heritage British Muslim women authors, including Ayisha Malik, Shelina Janmohamed and Afshan D’souza-Lodhi. Although outsiders often expect Muslim women to be timid, conservative, or submissive, the reality is different. While some of these authors express a quiet piety and […]
When was the last time you heard a Muslim woman speak for herself without a filter? Shortlisted for Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year. ‘Engrossing . . . fascinating . . . courageous’ – Observer. In 2016, Mariam Khan read that David Cameron had linked the radicalization of Muslim men to the ‘traditional submissiveness’ of Muslim women. Mariam […]
The play, The Promised Land written and performed by afshan and was part of a showcase at Southbank in London in July 2015 as part of the International Poetry Festival and then went on to tour Manchester and London. A Muslim woman called Aalia arrives from India to the UK as an asylum seeker, believing […]
part-it-part-not was written by afshan, directed by Amy Hailwood and performed by Shakera Louise Ahad. It was part of Royal Exchange’s Come Closer: Memories of Partition event A UNIQUE COLLABORATION BETWEEN MANCHESTER MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER, GREATER MANCHESTER BAME NETWORK, AHMED IQBAL ULLAH RACE RELATIONS RESOURCE CENTRE AND THE ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE TO MARK THE […]
In 2016 it was announced that afshan was one of 16 writers selected by Eclipse Theatre for their Revolution Mix programme The three-year Revolution Mix plan will comprise a series of mid-scale tours, two small-scale tours, two films and a series of radio dramas. Project organisers Eclipse Theatre Company said it would be “the largest ever […]
afshan d’souza-lodhi was born in Dubai and forged in Manchester. She is a writer of scripts and poetry. Her work has been performed and translated into numerous languages across the world. afshan is currently a LabFellow for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University and will be taking her one-woman show ‘How To Eat Mangoes’ to Washington DC in May 2022.
afshan has been commissioned to write and direct a short film for Channel 4 (An Act of Terror) and a radio play for BBC Sounds (Chop Chop). In 2021, afshan was a Sky Writes writer-in-residence for Rotherham, a partnership between Sky Studios and New Writing North. She is currently part of the Royal Exchange and WarnerMedia writers exchange programme. afshan is also developing a TV series with Sky Studios with her co-writer Guleraana Mir.
afshan has edited many anthologies and has an essay featured in Picador’s collection by Muslim women called Its Not About The Burqa. Her debut poetry collection ‘re:desire’ (Burning Eye Books) has been longlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2021). Her most recent play, Santi & Naz (co-written with Guleraana Mir) described as “tender yet sharply political” by The Guardian, won the Vault Outstanding New Work Award in 2020.
As well as her own writing, afshan is keen to develop other younger and emerging artists and sits on the boards of Manchester Literature Festival and Pie Radio.
twitter/ instagram: @afshandl