Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight is an awarding author Sri Lankan Canadian novelist Shyam Selvadurai .

Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka on February 12,1965 to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father--members of conflicting ethnic groups whose troubles form a major theme in his work. At the age of 19 ethnic riots in Sri Lanka drove his family to emigrate to Canada. He studied creative and professional writing as part of a Bachelor of Fine Arts program at York University.

After graduation he wrote for magazines and television before scoring success with his first novel, Funny Boy, published in 1994, which won the W. H. Smith/Books in Canada first novel award and the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Men's Fiction.

Funny Boy traces the story of Arjie as he grows from ridiculed "funny boy" more content to dress up as "bride-bride" with his female cousins than play cricket with the boys, to an intelligent, reflective teenager dangerously awakened by his first love, rebellious schoolmate Shehan. Told in six independent yet interwoven stories, the novel concludes with Arjie achieving maturity and discovers heartbreaking truths.


Selvadurai followed up Funny Boy with Cinnamon Gardens in 1999, and Swimming in the Monsoon Sea in 2005. His style, wit, and keen understanding of the characters, the culture and the experience of life in Sri Lanka as well as being gay has insured him a place as a significant figure in post-colonial and gay writing.

Sri Lankan critic Prakrti noted that Selvadurai's particular gift is to understand how such factors as ethnic tensions and the legacy of British colonial rule are interweavon with dominant ideologies of sexuality and gender.

While doesn't overtly address issues of lesbianism, Cinnamon Gardens, used a parallel narratives to link the oppression of women with that of gay men. Set in the 1920s in the well-heeled suburbs of (what was then) Ceylon, the novel exposes the stifling conformity that is the price of acceptance in the wealthy precincts of Cinnamon Gardens.

His third novel, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea is targeted to teens/young adults. Set in 1980 Sri Lanka, it's the story of a fourteen-year-old Sri Lankan boy falling in love with his visiting Canadian cousin. His crushed is played out against a school production of Othello, and the play's powerful theme of jealousy provides the backdrop to his angst. Selvadurai explored the pain and exhilaration of first love with unusual clarity and humor.

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea was a finalist for Canada's most prestigious literary award, the Governor General's Awards, in the category of children's literature. It was honored with a Lambda Literary Award in the Children's and Youth Literature category.

Selvadurai has also edited a collection of short stories entitlted Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers , which includes works by Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, and Hanif Kureishi, among others. He is represented in the book by "Pigs Can't Fly," the first of the six "stories" that comprise his book Funny Boy.

He was a contributor to TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1

Selvadurai's writing are filled with the meticulous research and a haunting detail of Sri Lanka, which remains vital in his imagination despite his having lived in Canada for so long. With a deep connection with his country of birth and its troubled history, he is also aware of how impossible it would be for him to live there. Sri Lanka's ethnic clashes may have led to Selvadurai's family's emigration, the country's homophobic attitudes, in part its anti-homosexual laws, have intensified his embrace of his new home, Canada.

In an essay, "Coming Out", he wrote for Time Magazine Asia's special issue on the Asian diaspora in 2003, he wrote a powerful account of the discomfort he and his partner, Andrew Chapman, experienced during a period spent in Sri Lanka in 1997. In the essay he writes that "in this country [Sri Lanka] that I still considered my home, I could never be at home" and while he revels in the comfort of feeling at ease in the home he shares with his partner in Toronto.

Selvadurai takes seriously the effect his books may have on other young gay Sri Lankans and his position as a role model for other gay Asians in North America. In explaining his decision to be openly gay, he remarked, "I remembered how it was for me feeling there was no one out there who was a role model of any sort. When I decided to be out in public, I was really thinking of that version of me in Sri Lanka who would read my book and feel relieved to not be alone. If I decided not to be out, I would be sending a message to that young person that I was still afraid and ashamed."

He currently lives in Toronto with his partner Andrew Champion