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A Literary Tapestry Woven by Local and International Wordsmiths

Step into a realm where words paint landscapes and emotions sculpt narratives. Our Author Page invites you to discover a symphony of voices and explore a tapestry of stories, ideas and inspirations that transcend borders.

Amanthi Harris grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka and in London, UK. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and has degrees in Law and Chemistry from Bristol University. Her novel BEAUTIFUL PLACE was published by Salt Publishing (UK) and Pan Macmillan India. LANTERN EVENING, a novella, won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and was published by Gatehouse Press. Her short stories have been published in

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Amanthi
Harris

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Ameena Hussein is a Sri Lankan author and co-founder of the Perera-Hussein Publishing House. Her non-fiction book Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics: Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka won the State Literary Prize for Humanities, 2020, and was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize. Her novel The Moon in the Water was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Award and the Dublin IMPAC. She was one of the judges for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

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Ameena
Hussein

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AMINUR RAHMAN was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and graduated with an M-PHARM[acy] degree. At present he is considered one of Bangladesh’s best known poets. He has published seven collections of poems in Bangla. His work has been translated in more than twenty-five languages and has poetry books in English (5), Spanish (4), German, Japanese, Mongolian, Arabic, Chinese, Bahasa Malay, Russian, Serbian and French. 

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Aminur
Rahman

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Anita Nair is one of India’s most acclaimed authors whose oeuvre ranges from literary fiction to noir to poetry to children’s literature. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages around the world and have been adapted for audio, the stage and the screen. 
Anita Nair is the recipient of several prizes including the Central Sahitya Akademi award, the Crossword Prize and the 

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Anita
Nair

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Carmel Miranda was born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka and is a medical practitioner by profession. Late in life she challenged herself to write a book, ‘just to see’ if she could do it. Her debut novel Crossmatch was published in 2020 and went on to win the Gratiaen Prize for 2020, the State Literary Award for best English novel in 2021, and was longlisted for the DublinLiterary Award in 2022.

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Carmel
Miranda

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Chiranthi Rajapakse is a Sri Lankan writer, she grew up in Kandy and now lives in Colombo.  Her second collection of short stories, ‘Keeping Time and other stories’ was selected as joint winner of the 2022 (30th) Gratiaen Prize.  Her first book ‘Names and Numbers’ was also shortlisted for the Gratiaen prize in 2017. Her writing has been published 

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Chiranthi
Rajapakse

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Christopher Kloeble is an award-winning scriptwriter and the author of three novels, a short story collection and a memoir. He has taught at Dartmouth College, Cambridge University and Hong Kong University, among others. His books have been translated into nine languages. He lives in Berlin and New Delhi. The English translation of his latest novel, ‘The Museum of the World,’ which will be adapted for the stage in 

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Christopher
Kloeble

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Ciara Mandulee Mendis is a Sri Lankan writer whose work has appeared in several international journals including the Queen’s Quarterly, Southeast Asian Review of English, Riptide Journal, The Bombay Review, Contemporary Literary Review India and Himal Southasian. Her collection of short stories The Lanka Box which was shortlisted for the 2021 Gratiaen Prize received the State Literary Award 2023. Her first collection of short stories 

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Ciara Mandulee
Mendis

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Giles Watkins is a coach and mentor for Aberkyn and Vistage UK and has over 30 years of global business and general management experience. He’s recently been featured in Psychreg Journal and Employer News to promote his new book, Positive Sleep: A Holistic Approach to Resolve Sleep Issues and Transform Your Life (Positive Wellbeing).

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Giles
Watkins

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James ‘Bamboo’ Braxton is one of the most well known antique faces on British television with over 40 years experience in the Art and Antiques world. His strength lies in a rounded general knowledge of antiques and their relevance in history and geographical place. He has worked for the BBC since May 2001 starting with Bargain Hunt in Paris, since then James has filmed in Paris, Dublin, New York and every county of Britain! 

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James
Braxton

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Koluu

Lal Medawattegedara is the author of two novels: Playing Pillow Politics at MGK (winner Gratiaen Prize 2012), Restless Rust (short-listed Gratiaen Prize 2021); and two short story collections, The Window Cleaner’s Soul (Short-listed Gratiaen Prize 2002) and Can you hear me running. His work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, Khaleej Times and Sri Lanka’s pioneering Christmas magazine Noel. He teacher English at the Open University of Sri Lanka. 

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Lal
Medawattegedara

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Novelist Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954. After graduating from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and obtained his MA at the University of London. Before writing full-time, he held many varied jobs including landscape gardener, motorcycle messenger and car mechanic. He also taught English in Colombia, an experience which determined the style and setting of his

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Louis de
Bernieres

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Louise Doughty is the author of ten novels, most recently A Bird in Winter, published by Faber & Faber UK Ltd. Her previous books include Platform Seven, filmed for ITVX; Black Water, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; the bestseller Apple Tree Yard, adapted for BBC One; and Whatever You Love, nominated for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for fiction. She has been nominated for many other prizes including the Sunday Times Short Story Prize and the CWA 

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Louise
Doughty

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Based in Sri Lanka, Marguerite Richards is an American writer and book editor, focusing on memoir and diverse voices. She holds degrees in literature and translation, has taught in France and Chile, and fell in love with magazine publishing in New York. Her articles and essays have been published in various places, but she has found her calling with books. Her first one, The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, was published by Penguin RH in 2019. 

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Marguerite
Richards

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Nicole Farhi first gained public recognition in the 1980s as a fashion designer. She created her eponymous label in1982,10 years after having started the well known French Connection company with her partner Stephen Marks .    

She went on to win The British Fashion Award for Best Contemporary Designer 3 years running and she became one of the best known fashion designers in the UK, an inspiration to a generation of women. 

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Nicole
Farhi

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Preeti Shenoy is a renowned Indian author of fifteen bestselling books. With simplicity and readability as her hallmark, her books tackle serious issues such as mental health, gender inequality, socio-economic class divide, relationship dynamics, and challenges faced by young adults.

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Preeti
Shenoy

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Ramya is an award-winning Sri Lankan author. Her poetry collection, There’s an Island in the Bone won the 2011 Sri Lanka State Literary Joint Award. She was long listed for the Fish Poetry Prize, Ireland, 2011, and was joint runner-up to the Guardian Orange First Words Prize, UK, 2009. TimesOnline, UK, featured her in its 2009 selection of contemporary war poetry. Her book, Love Poems from a Frangipani Garden, was published by Mica Press, UK.

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Ramya
Jirasinghe

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Ronya Othmann, born in Munich in 1993 is an author, poet, and journalist. She writes poetry, prose, and essays, and is a member of the GID poetry collective. The daughter of a Kurdish-Yazidi father and a German mother, her work deals with themes of migration, homeland, and war. Her work has been published in anthologies and magazines such as BELLA Triste, Jahrbuch der Lyrik, TAZ am Wochenende, and 

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Ronya
Othmann

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Saskya Jain grew up in New Delhi. Her first novel, Fire Under Ash (Penguin Random House, 2014), was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt Prize. Her second novel, Geeta Rahman at Championship Point (Simon & Schuster, 2021), was nominated for the Times of India AutHer Award and the Tata Literature Live Book of the Year Award. She has taught creative writing and literature at Hong Kong University, Grinnell College and Dartmouth College.

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Saskya
Jain

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Seneka Abeyratne is an economist, fiction writer, photographer, digital artist, dance choreographer, and part-time journalist (economics/fine arts). He has won both the Gratiaen Prize and the State Literary Award. His debut novel Fragments of a Fugue was published by Excalibur Press, London in 1992. His second novel Asmita was published by Dr Cicero Books, New York in 2017. His local publications include the award

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Seneka
Abeyratne

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Shehan has published two novels and three children's books, including Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, winner of the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize, and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, winner of  the 2022 Booker Prize. He’s also written features on sport, music and travel for The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Wisden, GQ, Conde Nast and National Geographic He has over 20 years’ experience working for ad agencies,

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Shehan
Karunatilaka

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Prajwal Parajuly—the son of a Nepali-Indian father and a Nepali mother—is the author of The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee. The Gurkha's Daughter, his collection of short stories, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize in the UK and a semi-finalist for the Story Prize in the US. Land Where I Flee, his first novel, was a finalist for the Emile Guimet Prize and the First Novel Prize in France. It was also declared a Book of the Year by The Independent, The Kansas 

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Prajwal
Parajuly

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Shobhaa Dé, voted by Reader's Digest as one of 'India's Most Trusted People' and by Daily News and Analysis as one of the '50 Most Powerful Women in India', is a bestselling author and a popular social commentator. Her works, both fiction and non-fiction, have been featured in comparative literature courses at universities in India and abroad. Her writing has been translated into many languages including Hindi, Marathi, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, 

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Shobhaa
De

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Shrabani Basu is a Sunday Times best-selling author and journalist. Her books include the critically acclaimed The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer, For King and Another Country, Victoria & Abdul: (now a major Oscar-nominated motion picture starring Dame Judi Dench and Ali Fazal) Spy Princess and Curry: The Story of the Nation’s Favourite Dish.

Shrabani is a frequent commentator on BBC, ITV and Channel 4 on Indian history and Empire.

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Shrabani
Basu

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Shyam Selvadurai 's Funny Boy, won the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the US. He is the author of Cinnamon Gardens, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea and The Hungry Ghosts. His work has been translated into 9 languages and published worldwide. Funny Boy was made into a film, for which Shyam co-wrote the screenplay, and for which he won the Canadian Screen Award and the New York Cinema Independent.

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Shyam
Selvadurai

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David Hare was described by the Washington Post as “the premiere political dramatist writing in English.” He has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty, Pravda (with Howard Brenton), The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, Skylight, Amy’s View, The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens, The Absence of War, The Judas Kiss and Straight Line Crazy. 

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Sir David
Hare

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Sonora Jha is the author of the novels Foreign (2013) and The Laughter (2023) and the memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son (2021). The Laughter has been hailed by The New York Times as “a no-holds-barred comic achievement,” and earned rave reviews from The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews, India Today, and The Seattle Times amongst others. After a career in journalism in India and Singapore, Dr. Jha is now a professor of 

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Sonora
Jha

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Stuart Cosgrove is a writer and television producer. He is an executive director of the Scottish production and development company BOY 313. He was media editor with the music paper NME and a feature writer for a range of newspapers and magazines before setting up the independent production company Big Star.

In 1994 he joined Channel 4 as Head of Independent Film and Video and in 1996 was promoted to Head of Arts and 

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Stuart
Cosgrove

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P. Tovenaar is a British-Sri Lankan writer and speaker born and educated in the UK. Following a lengthy career working in International News, in London, she moved to South Asia working as an International Technical Expert on Arts&Media for social change.  Inspired by working with marginalized communities, Tovenaar’s writing focuses primarily on female identities and gender equality. Her first book, ‘Mum’s The Word ‘ is humorous 

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T P
Tovenaar

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V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an NPR Best Book of the Year) and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota,  

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V V
Ganeshananthan

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Vivimarie VanderPoorten teaches at the Open University of Sri Lanka. Her first book of poems nothing prepares you won the 2007 Gratiaen Prize and two other collections of poetry, Stitch your Eyelids Shut and Borrowed Dust, won national awards. Her work has also been published in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, UK, USA and  Malaysia. She is also a translator from Sinhala to English  and her translated work has been published by the Commonwealth Foundation. 

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Vivimarie
Vanderpoorten

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William Dalrymple is the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapucinski Prize-winning Return of a King. His most recent book, The Anarchy, was short listed for the Duke of Wellington medal, the Tata Book of the Year and the Historical Writers Association Award, was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Medal from the US Council on 

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William
Dalrymple

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Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is an author, data scientist and general tinkerer from Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Watchdog Sri Lanka, a research collective, factchecking operation, investigative journalism hub and community tech builder. His fiction includes novels like Numbercaste, The Inhuman Race, the Wretched and the Damned, and The Salvage Crew. His stories have won the Gratiean Prize, been nominated for the Nebula and Independent Games 

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Yudhanjaya
Wijeratne

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Chhimi Tenduf-La is the author of The Amazing Racist, Panther and Loyal Stalkers. He is based in Colombo, where he is trying to work on his fourth book.

Chhimi
Tenduf-la

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International fashion designer and creative director Dinesh Chandrasena obtained a degree in fashion Design from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) in Los Angeles in 1996, secured a 6-month internship at Mega-brand Calvin Klein in New York and upon Her return to Los Angeles took over as Principle Designer for the evening wear design house Claire's Collection.

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Dinesh
Chandrasena

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Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja is a Sri Lankan economist who has worked in Asia and Europe. His books, which have been translated into Chinese and French, include The Postwar Evolution of Development Thinking and Connecting Asia. Wignaraja is Visiting Senior Fellow at ODI in London, Professorial Fellow in economics at Gateway House in Mumbai and Advisor to the Sri Lankan President.

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Ganeshan
Wignaraja

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George
Cooke

Mrinali Thalgodapitiya is a Sri Lankan writer, creative ideator and artist. She has one volume of poetry – Standing Woman’s Words – and showings of her art, to her credit. Her primary training and education is in the field of law though she now dedicates almost all her time to exploring her creative interests.

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Mrinali
Thalgodapitiya

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Neluka Silva is a Senior Professor in English at the University of Colombo, and former Head of Department and Director of Studies, Faculty of Arts, and was the President of the University of Oxford Alumni Society of Sri Lanka. She is the founder/director of Kids @ Play a children’s
theatre workshop. 

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Neluka
Silva

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Dr Palitha Kohona, was the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to China.

He was the former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, 2009 - 2015.

 

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Palitha
Kohona

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An award winning journalist with Presidential, Zonta and Sri Lanka Woman Leader awards, she has over 35 years’ experience in the media.  A Fellow of the ICSA (UK) and ICCSL (SL), she’s a multiple hat-wearing busybody, involved in multiple projects.

 

Savithri
Rodrigo

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An avid reader, a teacher, a book critique, a passionate writer, but most importantly a mother, Artika Aurora Bakshi lives in a world of words. 

Her books, My Little Sikh Handbook, My Little Sikh Handbook 2:Ardas, and My Little Sikh Handbook: Travel Journal, My Little Sikh Handbook: The Mighty Sikh Empire, we’re well-received.  She is currently working on her fifth. 

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Artika
Bakshi

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Shevanthie Goonesekera is the author of the book 'Mount Lavinia, TheGovernor's Palace' which charted the 200 year history of a former British
Governor's Residence that is now Mount Lavinia Hotel. The book was published in 2006 (a Paradise Isle Publication) now in a 2nd Edition (July
2016). Shevanthie is currently working on her second book documenting 
 

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Shevanthie
Goonesekera

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Sukanya Wignaraja is a psychotherapist and coach in private practice. Of Indian heritage, she was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. She has lived and worked in India, UK, Philippines and Japan. She was formerly an editor with Oxford University Press in New Delhi, a Specialist Advisor in Social Work with UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London, and also worked in mental health NGOs in Manila and Tokyo as a psychotherapist and trainer.  

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Sukanya
Wignaraja

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Chiara Armellini is an Italian illustrator who lives and works in Paris. She studied graphic design and illustration at the ISIA (Institut Supérieur d'Arts Appliqués) in Urbino (Italy) and at the Massana School in Barcelona. Her illustrations have been selected for the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2010 and 2012 and for other major illustration competitions. 

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Chiara
Armellini

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Nimmi was a member of the National Youth theatre of Great Britain in another century and then went on to get a BA HONS in Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths College London University. She has won a few awards, but she’s old now and desperately trying to find other things to share because she is being forced to. She is known for playing Nurse Mari in 4 seasons of ITV’s Good Karma hospital, but that’s over now. You could have 

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Nimmi
Harasgama

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Longlisted for the Gratiaen Prize in 2021 - for Softlv We Fall, her second book of poems after Poison Apple (2018) - Megan Dhakshini is a Tamil creative multidisciplinary who works in advertising, creative design, voice acting, and singing. She counts as influences on her writing Sharanya Manivannan, Ocean Vuong, Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, Nayirrah Waheed, Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen and Ana'is Nin. 

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Megan
Dhakshini

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The Ceylon Literary Festival is celebrated in Sri Lanka, uniting renowned writers, poets, and thinkers from around the world. Hosted in the picturesque cities of Colombo and Kandy, the festival offers a diverse array of panels, workshops, and cultural performances. It is a hub for literary dialogue, cultural exchange, and the celebration of the written word. 

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