Shyam Selvadurai

Shyam Selvadurai (born 12 February 1965) is a Sri Lankan Canadian novelist. He is most noted for his 1994 novel Funny Boy, which won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.

Background Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father—members of conflicting ethnic groups whose troubles form a major theme in his work. Selvadurai recounted an account of the discomfort he and his partner experienced during a period spent in Sri Lanka in 1997 in his essay "Coming Out" in Time Asia's special issue on the Asian diaspora in 2003.

In 2004, Selvadurai edited a collection of short stories: Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers, which includes works by Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, and Hanif Kureishi, among others. He published a young adult novel, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, in 2005. Swimming won the Lambda Literary Award in the Children's and Youth Literature category in 2006.

In 2013, he released a fourth novel, The Hungry Ghosts. In 2013 Selvadurai's Funny Boy was included in the syllabus under marginalized study and gay literature of the under graduate English Department of The American College in Madurai. In 2014, he was presented the Bonham Centre Award from The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, for his contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification.

In 2020, Deepa Mehta released the film Funny Boy, an adaptation of Selvadurai's novel. At the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021, Mehta and Selvadurai won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In 2022, he released Mansions of the Moon, a historical novel about the Buddha’s wife, Yasodhara.

Personal life He currently lives in Toronto with his partner Andrew Champion.

In 2016, a species of spider was named after Selvadurai called Brignolia Shyami, a small goblin spider which is a pale yellow colour and between 1.4mm and 1.5mm in length.

Works Funny Boy. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994. (and others). Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Male Novel, and Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award for 1994 Cinnamon Gardens. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea. Toronto: Tundra, 2005. . Lambda Literary Award in the Children's and Youth Literature category in 2006 Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. (editor) The Hungry Ghosts. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2013. Many Roads Through Paradise: An Anthology Of Sri Lankan Literature. London: Penguin Books Limited, 2014. (compiler and translator) Mansions of the Moon. 2022.