Selvadurai, Shyam

Shyam Selvadurai was born 12 February 1965 in Colombo, Sri Lanka to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father. He attended Royal Junior School and Royal College in Colombo and participated in theatre; he directed his first production, The Wizard of Oz at the age of 13. Ethnic riots, between Tamil and Sinhalese beginning in July 1983, led Selvadurai and his family to immigrate to Canada when he was 19 years old. He attended York University for a bachelor of fine arts in theatre directing and playwriting between 1984 and 1989.
He moved to Montreal in 1990 to focus on writing and published his first story “Nagadvipa Road” in Montreal Serai in 1991. He published “Pigs Can’t Fly” in the Toronto South Asian Review in spring 1992, which resulted in securing an agent, and a plan to expand “Pigs Can’t Fly” into a novel. Funny Boy, a novel presented through six short stories, was published in 1994 by McClelland & Stewart in Canada and Jonathan Cape in the UK. It was shortlisted for the 1994 Giller Prize and was awarded the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Funny Boy would go on to be translated into seven languages and published in eleven countries. His second novel, Cinnamon Gardens was published in 1998 by McClelland & Stewart, which was shortlisted for the Trillium Award in 1998. His third novel, for young adults, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea was published by Tundra Books in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His most recent work was The Hungry Ghosts which was published by Double Day Canada and Penguin India in April 2013. Selvadurai received an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia in 2010. He taught creative writing workshops at York University between 1998 and 2010, and at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies in 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009. Shyam Selvadurai lives in Toronto.