About the Contributors
to the Poetry and Fiction Section
Formerly the Chair of the English Department and Professor of English at the University of Peradeniya, Ashley Halpé is a great contributor to the diffusion of Sri Lankan literature. Seven paintings from the collection of his wife and himself and an accompanying chapter “Contemporary Art in Sri Lanka” written by him appear in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘The Art of India’ (2003). He is the author of three volumes of poetry: Silent Arbiters Have Camped in my Skul, Homing and Sigiri Poems, and of several translations from Sinhala into English. He is currently the chair of the Sri Lanka branch of ACLALS.
Ann Aldred was the Vice-President of Dandelion Magazine Society and an Editor of blue buffalo, an Alberta literary magazine, for several years. She is an alumna of the University of Calgary.
Jean Arasanayagam is a leading English writer in Sri Lanka who was born into a colonial “Ceylon” and has lived in the post-imperial “Sri Lanka.” She has published poetry and prose widely. Among her collections of short stories are Peacocks and Dreams (1996); All is Burning (1995); and Fragments of a Journey (1992). Her collections of poetry include Shooting the Floricans (1993); Reddened Waters Flow Clear (1991); Trial by Terror (1987); Out of Our Prisons We Emerge (1987); A Colonial Inheritance and Other Poems (1985), and many others.
Cyril Dabydeen’s poetry and short stories have appeared in about 60 periodicals and anthologies across Canada, the US, UK and Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia, and the Caribbean. His over-fifteen books of prose and poetry include Another Way to Dance: Contemporary Asian Poets in Canada and the USA (TSAR, Toronto). He was the Poet Laureate of Ottawa from l984 to l987, and received the City’s first award of Excellence in Writing and Publishing in 2000. His latest book of poems to appear is Hemisphere of Love (TSAR, 2003). He teaches in the Department of English, University of Ottawa. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Caribbean LIteratures (US).
Emeritus Professor Yasmine Gooneratne lives and works in Australia and Sri Lanka. Her publications include Jane Austen; Alexander Pope; Silence, Exile and Cunning: The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala; Relative Merits:A Personal Memoir of the Bandaranaike Family of Sri Lanka; Celebrating Sri Lankan Women’s English Writing; A Change of Skies (novel); The Pleasures of Conquest (novel); Masterpiece & Other Stories (short stories); This Inscrutable Englishman:Sir John D’Oyly (co-authored biography); Celebrations and Departures (poetry); and Diverse Inheritance(essays). She has received, among other awards, the Order of Australia, the Raja Rao Award, and the Marjorie Barnard Literary Award.
Author of The Faces of Galle Face Green (2nd Ed., 2003), Suwanda Sugunasiri has published two collections of short fiction in Sinhala. He is currently working on a novel. The selections here are from a second collection of poetry being finalized for publication. Sugunasiri teaches at Trinity College, University of Toronto and is Founder of Nalanda College for Buddhist Studies. His seminal study, The Search for Meaning: the Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origin (Secretary of State, Ottawa, Canada, 1988) introduced to the Canadian scholars this extensive literature. Sugunasiri is also co-founder (along with M. G. Vassanji) of the Toronto South Asian Review. He lives with his wife, Swarna, in Toronto.
Robert Elliot Fox teaches at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His areas of specialization include African and African-American literatures, as well as issues of multiculturalism and “race.” He taught at the University of Ife in Nigeria from 1978 to 1985. He is the author of Conscientious Sorcerers (1987) and Masters of the Drum (1995). Current projects include Archaeologies of Soul, a collection of pieces dealing with black culture and aesthetics, and a novel about postcolonial Africa and postmodern drifters.
Jayasree was born in Kochi, Kerala. She holds an M.A. in Economics and works in the Union Bank of India, Secunderabad. She writes poems in English and Malayalam. Two published anthologies in Malayalam, Kaathorthu (Listening Carefully) and Samudrathil ninnum Sookshikkenda Dooram (Distance We Have to Keep from the Ocean) are admired by critics for the gravity of emotions and their simple syntax. Many of her poems have a diary-like intimacy and immediacy.
Pumla Dineo Gqola is a feminist writer of short stories and experimental essays. She is a senior lecturer at the English Department of the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.
Note: For the biographical statements of the contributors to the other sections of this journal, see Author Bio in the Research Support Tool that accompanies each item
