[2] Over the course of her life, Durand directed and presented various television and radio programs, and worked on numerous literary magazines in Mexico and El Salvador.

From 1963 to 1970, she taught in the humanities department of the University of El Salvador, before her exile to Mexico amid political repression of academics.

Her poetry was marked by a deep intimacy, romantic themes, precision, and simplicity, with her autobiographical poems centering on nature and love.

[5] After graduating from normal school in 1950, from 1952 to 1958 she pursued literary studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), under a scholarship from the Salvadoran government of Óscar Osorio.

[1][4] Starting in 1950, she became a member of the Committed Generation and the Grupo Octubre, two interrelated groups of writers in El Salvador in this period.