Shyam Selvadurai, the Canada Council Writer-in-Residence at Green College for 2012 was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He came to Canada with his family at the age of nineteen, and has a BFA from York University in Toronto. Funny Boy, his first novel, was published to immediate acclaim in 1994, was a national bestseller, and won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Cinnamon Gardens, his second novel, was shortlisted for the prestigious Trillium Award and has been published in the US, UK, India, and Europe. Selvadurai is also the author of an acclaimed novel for young adults, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Shyam will be reading from two of his novels and discussing his work as a diasporic writer. This reading is part of the ongoing Green College Principal’s lecture series, “Thinking at the Edge of Reason: Interdisciplinarity in Action.”
Select Books and Articles Available at UBC Library
Selvadurai, S. (1998). Cinnamon gardens. Toronto: M&s.
Selvadurai, S. (2005). Swimming in the monsoon sea. Toronto: Tundra Books.
Anthonisen, C. (. (2001). Breakfast with Shyam Selvadurai. Windsor Review, 34(1), 1. [Link]
Salgado, M. (2015). Autobiographies of time and place: Shyam Selvadurai in conversation. Wasafiri, 30(1), 51-56. doi:10.1080/02690055.2015.981027 [Link]
UBC Library Research Guides