Short Stories
I remember my two older daughters running towards the rocks.
That last picture keeps coming back: their long legs running with laughter across the exposed sand.
I never called them back. I never called them back.
I call and call them now but they keep running on.from ‘The Waves’, a Tsunami story
published in Wasafiri___
It had begun with the touching of rocks. He stroked a tall granite boulder and saw a temple emerge. The square columns grew to support a panoply of gods that people came to worship from miles around. Their prayers consecrated the land and from the ground rose a past that might have been true. In time it was agreed this was an ancient, sacred land.
from ‘Invisible Island’
published in Bridges: A Global Anthology of Short Stories___
The writers were at the table, eating each others’ words. Delicate morsels of sliced crime, tangy segments of romance, silver spoonerisms washed down with a glass of iced humour that turned the lips green.
from ‘A Feast of Words’
published in Confluence and online by English PEN
My short stories have been published in international magazines such as Wasafiri, South Asian Review and Short Story, and anthologized in Bridges: A Global Anthology of Short Stories. Some of them are readily available on-line.
‘The Breach’ – written in 2009 in the last stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka and first published in Bridges – was subsequently published in December 2013 as the Story of the Month in The Missing Slate and is available here.
An ‘Author of the Month’ interview can be found here.
‘A Feast of Words’ – written in 2011 in response to an event that took place at the Galle Literary Festival – has been used to highlight the case of the disappeared journalist, Prageeth Eknaligoda. It was published in Confluence in March 2011 and is available online on the English PEN website here.
Stories published in Wasafiri, including my autobiographical story, ‘Heart’, can be accessed via their website here.
In 2009, ‘Too Many Legs’ was Highly Commended in the Commonwealth Short Story Competition and subsequently commercially produced on the CD, Commonwealth Short Stories 2009: Voices from our World (Commonwealth Foundation and CBA).
As writer and academic, I have long supported and participated in the biennial International Short Story Conference.