birth_place nationality notableworks birth_date period spouse image article_title name occupation
colombo , sri lanka sri lankan-canadian '' funny boy '' , '' cinnamon gardens '' 12 february 1965 1990s-present andrew champion shyamselvadurai.jpg shyam selvadurai
 shyam selvadurai writer
shyam selvadurai

shyam selvadurai -lrb- born 12 february 1965 -rrb- is a sri lankan canadian novelist who wrote `` funny boy '' -lrb- 1994 -rrb- , which won the books in canada first novel award , and `` cinnamon gardens '' -lrb- 1998 -rrb- .
he currently lives in toronto with his partner andrew champion .
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 .
ethnic riots in 1983 drove the family to emigrate to canada when selvadurai was nineteen .
he studied creative and professional writing as part of a bachelor of fine arts program at york university .
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 .
he was a contributor to `` tok : writing the new toronto , book 1 '' .
in 2013 , he released a fourth novel , `` the hungry ghosts '' .
in 2013 shyam 's funny boy was included in the syllabus under marginalized study and gay literature of the under graduation english department of the american college in madurai in 2014 , shyam 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 .
