Neluka Silva is a Senior Professor in English at the University of Colombo, and former Head of Department and Director of Studies, Faculty of Arts, and was the President of the University of Oxford Alumni Society of Sri Lanka. She is the founder/director of Kids @ Play; a children’s theatre workshop. She was educated at the Universities of Colombo, Leeds, Oxford and Cambridge. She teaches courses on Children’s Literature at the University of Colombo, and Technical University, Dresden, Germany. Her novel The Iron Fence (2011) was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize and was longlisted for the Commonwealth First Book Prize 2012 and the Dublin IMPAC prize 2012. She has two collections of short Stories: The Rolled Back Beach with Simon Harris (2008) and Our Neighbours and other stories (2009). “Our Neighbours” was one of the 20 stories placed in the Highly Commended Winner category in the 2008 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. She has also published a collection of short stories for children My Elephant Secret and other Stories (2019) and published 3 stories Moona Finds Friends, Oshana and the Sili Sili Bag (2023) and Trapped in a Smoky Sky (2024), which launched at CLF (2024), to introduce children to environmental conservation issues. Asia Foundation, Sri Lanka, has commissioned her to write a story on the theme of leopard conservation for their global Let’s Read program for children. The story is completed and will be published later this year. At the Ceylon Literary Festival (CLF) 2024, she moderated the two sessions with Sir David Hare in Kandy and Colombo and was the co-curator of the Children’s Festival and conducted 3 creative writing workshops for children. Her academic works include The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writing from South Asia (Sage 2004) and The Hybrid Island: Culture Crossings and the Invention of Identity in Sri Lanka (edited 2002), and numerous essays in peer reviewed academic journals and books. She has been a visiting professor at the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK; Roskidle University and Arhus University, Denmark; Justus Liebig University and Technical University, Germany; University of Barcelona, Spain; University of Athens, Greece; and University of Liege, Belgium.