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In January 2018, her daughter Lisa died of cancer after having been diagnosed in December 2016.

A novel inspired by Dunbar's life and work, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe, was published in 2017 by Wrecking Ball Press, shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and gained the Society of Authors' K Blundell Trust Award for Fiction. A second edition came from Fleet Publishing in the same year. In 2019 a stage adaptation by Freedom Studios and screenwriter Lisa Holdsworth was announced in The Guardian. Dramatisation of Stripe's "strikingly atmospheric novel" will focus on women's relationships, with a cast of five sharing the roles. It shows a teenage Dunbar rising to national note with her autobiographical works The Arbor and Rita, Sue and Bob Too, and the challenges of life on the Buttershaw estate in Bradford.

A film about her life, The Arbor, directed by Clio Barnard, was released in 2010. The film uses actors lip-synching to interviews with Dunbar and her family, and concentrates on the strained relationship between Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine. The film was nominated for a BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by a British Director, and won the Sutherland Trophy, at the 2010 London Film Festival Awards. It also won the Sheffield Innovation Award at the 2010 Sheffield Doc/Fest.

In 2007 her eldest daughter Lorraine, a heroin addict at the time, was convicted of manslaughter for causing the death of her child by gross neglect after the child ingested a lethal dose of methadone.

In 2000, Dunbar's life and her surroundings were revisited in the play A State Affair by Robin Soans.

As a single mother, Dunbar spent 18 months in a Women's Aid refuge and became an increasingly heavy drinker. In 1990 she died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 29 after becoming ill in The Beacon, a pub in Reevy Road and a location seen in the opening shot of Rita, Sue and Bob Too.

The film version of Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987) was adapted for the cinema by Dunbar, directed by Alan Clarke and filmed on the Buttershaw estate. Dunbar disowned the film when more writers were brought in to give it a happier ending. However, it created considerable controversy on the estate because of its negative portrayal of the area. Dunbar was threatened by several residents, but nevertheless continued to live there.

Dunbar was quickly commissioned to write a follow-up play, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, first performed in 1982. This explores similar themes to The Arbor through the lives of two teenage girls who are having affairs with the same married man. Dunbar's third play, Shirley (1986), places greater emphasis on a central character. It depicts a girl's "tumultuous relationship" with her mother. As she explained, she meant to write "about Shirley and John but, you know, I wrote the mother in and she bloody took over the whole play."

Dunbar began her first play The Arbor in 1977 at the age of 15, writing it as a classroom assignment for CSE English. It is the story of "a Bradford schoolgirl who falls pregnant to her Pakistani boyfriend on a racist estate," and has an abusive drunken father. Encouraged by her teacher, she was helped to develop the play to performance standard. It received its première in 1980 at London's Royal Court Theatre, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. At age 18, Dunbar was the youngest playwright to have her work performed there. Alongside a play entered by Lucy Anderson Jones, The Arbor jointly won at the Young Writers' Festival, and was later augmented and performed in New York City. On 26 March 1980, she was featured in the BBC's Arena arts documentary series.

Dunbar first became pregnant at age 15; the baby was stillborn at 6 months. She later had three children by three different fathers. The first, Lorraine, was born in 1979, and had a Pakistani father. A year later, in 1980, Lisa was born, again while Dunbar was still a teenager. About three years later, she had a son, Andrew, with Jim Wheeler.

Andrea Dunbar (22 May 1961 – 20 December 1990) was an English playwright. She wrote The Arbor (1980) and Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1982), an autobiographical drama about the sexual adventures of teenage girls living in a run-down part of Bradford, West Yorkshire. She wrote most of the adaptation for the film Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987). The Mail on Sunday described Dunbar as "a genius straight from the slums".