Shyam Selvadurai  is a Sri Lankan Canadian novelist best known for his award-winning debut novel Funny Boy (1994). Born to a Sinhalese mother and Tamil father, the ethnic tensions in Sri Lanka strongly influenced his writing, especially after his family emigrated to Canada following the 1983 riots. He studied theatre at York University and later earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Selvadurai has written several notable works, including Cinnamon Gardens, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, and The Hungry Ghosts, and has also edited a collection of South Asian short fiction. His work has earned multiple accolades, and Funny Boy was adapted into a film in 2020, for which he co-won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.