Shyam Selvadurai

Shyam Selvadurai (b. 1965 in Colombo) is a Sri Lankan Canadian novelist who wrote "Funny Boy" (1994), which won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and "Cinnamon Gardens" (1998).

Selvadurai was born in Colombo and is of mixed Tamil and Sinhala background. He emigrated to Canada with his family when he was nineteen after the 1983 Colombo riots. He currently lives in Toronto with his partner Andrew Champion.citation |last=Hunn |first=Deborah |title=Selvadurai, Shyam |year=2006 |url=http://www.glbtq.com/literature/selvadurai_s.html |accessdate=2007-09-05 |periodical=glbtq.com.]

Selvadurai recounted an account of the discomfort he and his partner experienced during a period spent in Sri Lanka in 1997 in his essay "Coming Out" in Time Asia's special issue on the Asian diaspora in 2003.

In 2004, Selvadurai edited a collection of short stories: "Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers", which includes works by Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, and Hanif Kureishi, among others. He published a young adult novel, "Swimming in the Monsoon Sea", in 2005. "Swimming" won the Lambda Literary Award in the Children's and Youth Literature category in 2006. He was a contributor to "TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1".cite book |title=TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1 |date=Fall 2006 |publisher=Zephyr Press]

Publications

*"Funny Boy", Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994. ISBN 0771079508 (and others). Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Male Novel, and Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award for 1994
*"Cinnamon Gardens", Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998. ISBN 0786864737
*"Swimming in the Monsoon Sea", 2005. ISBN 0887767354 Lambda Literary Award in the Children's and Youth Literature category in 2006
*"Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers" edited by Shyam Selvadurai. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005. ISBN 0618576800

References

External links

* [http://www.interlog.com/~funnyboy/ Personal website]