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.

"When 15-year-old Andrea Dunbar failed to bring in the ingredients for a domestic science lesson, her punishment was to spend her lunchtime writing the words ‘Why I Don’t Like Cookery’.

What Andrea wrote instead was a witty essay on how baking buns was a middle-class pursuit and joints of meat were more practical for big families on Buttershaw estate.

'When the essay was passed around the staffroom, to howls of laughter, head of drama Tony Priestley was astonished at what he saw,' wrote Adelle Stripe in her acclaimed novel Black Teeth And A Brilliant Smile.

'"[3]Dunbar began her first play, The Arbor, in 1977 at the age of 15,[9] writing it as a classroom assignment for CSE English, "in green biro on pages torn from a school exercise book".

[14] 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.

"[33]In 1990, she died of a brain haemorrhage in Bradford Royal Infirmary at the age of 29, after falling ill in The Beacon,[34] a pub on the Buttershaw Estate, at the junction of Reevy Road West and The Crescent.

(Bob’s street is very familiar: my schoolfriend Lucy lived on it, and if you look in the background of the scene where Fat Fucking Mavis pulls up in her Austin Metro, you can see her on her bike.

[9][7][47][46] 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.

It portrayed 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.

[52][53] A 2019, Woolyback[54] production for BBC Radio 4 written and directed by Sean Grundy – Rita, Sue and Andrea Too – dramatized the life and career of Dunbar, played by Natalie Gavin.

[55] In April 2024, Bristol-based artist Stewy created a spray-painted stencil artwork of Andrea Dunbar, on the side of The Queen pub, on Bridge Street, in Bradford.