The 33rd Gratiaen Prize - Members of the Jury

V. V. Ganeshananthan - The Chair

V. V. Ganeshananthan is the author of Brotherless Night, which won the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction, the 2024 Carol Shields Prize, and the 2023 Asian Prize. The novel was also a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an NPR Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. She co-hosts Literary Hub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast and teaches at the University of Minnesota.

Dinidu Karunanayake - The Academic

Dinidu Karunanayake is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Elon University, North Carolina, USA. His research and teaching concentrate on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Anglophone postcolonial literature, Asian American literature, human rights, postmemory, and diaspora studies. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Miami University and a B.A. in English from the University of Colombo. His articles have appeared in such journals as ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, South Asian Review, and ICES Research Papers, and his chapters have been featured in the edited volumes The Subject(s) of Human Rights: Critical Asian and Asian American Studies (Temple UP), Teaching Anglophone Diasporic South Asian Literature (MLA), and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture (Oxford UP). He is the co-editor of the Special Double Issue of South Asian Review on “Global Sri Lankan Literature and Culture.”

Azara Jaleel - The Informed Reader

Azara Jaleel is the Editor-in-Chief of ARTRA Magazine, Sri Lankan Modern & Contemporary Art Magazine established in 2012. Having published 70 editions, she has interviewed over 1000 art personalities whilst working with academics, critics, historians of local and international repute in building an archive of art essays, interviews, critiques, publications & panel discussions across Sri Lanka, UK & UAE through the years. Azara received her BA (Hons.) in English from the University of Colombo, and has completed her Postgraduate Studies in International Studies, Marketing & Communications from BCIS (SL), CIM (UK) and University of Virginia (USA).