Hafsah Aneela Bashir is an award winning Manchester-based poet, playwright & producer originally from East London. Founder and co-director of the arts collective, Outside The Frame Arts, she is passionate about championing voices outside the mainstream, challenging the gatekeepers of knowledge and increasing diverse representation within the arts.
Winner of the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship 2019, she was an Associate Artist with Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Supported Artist at The Royal Exchange Theatre and is currently an Associate Artist with The Poetry Exchange. Creating socially engaged work with community at its heart, her play Cuts Of The Cloth was commissioned for PUSH Festival 2019. Her debut poetry collection The Celox And The Clot is published by Burning Eye Books. She was selected for the Artistic Directors Leadership Programme, a scheme preparing Leaders Of Tomorrow from minority ethnic backgrounds for future leadership roles. She was one of ten authors selected for the New Writing North’s Read Regional 2020 campaign.
She has worked creatively with Manchester International Festival, Ballet Black Ldn, HOME Theatre Mcr, Manchester Literature Festival, ANU Productions Irl, the Imperial War Museum and the National Festival Of Making in collaboration with Luke Jerram. Recent works include writing the libretto for The Bridge Between Breaths, a FormidAbility & Tete a Tete festival commission exploring Britain’s involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade, a Heart Of Pendle project as Artist In Residence with In-Situ exploring stories of place & identity in the landscape of Pendle Hill and her autobiographical show Four Dholis and a Divorce about community joy, the rituals of marriage and the stigma of divorce in the South Asian, Muslim community.
She is currently curating an exhibition for July 2025 exploring people, place & the textile industry centred around Oxford Mills in Greater Manchester and has been commissioned by the National Forest in Burton Upon Trent for the Earth Narrative project connecting women, faith and nature. She is founder and Creative Director of the innovative Poetry Health Service – a free digital service providing poetry panaceas as a tool for connection and healing with over 80 contributing poets. She served as a Board Trustee for Manchester City Of Literature and is currently the Community Producer for the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre and Education Trust in Manchester Central Library.
