Vihanga Perera is active in literature since 2006, and is a published poet, short story writer and novelist in Sri Lanka. He is also a researcher and teacher in literature. He has been awarded several national literary prizes in Sri Lanka, including the Gratiaen (2014) and State Literary (2015) awards. His work has been previously featured as classroom texts in Sri Lanka and India.
At present, he is working with a group of young writers in a community publication experiment that also involves building literary enclaves.
One night - it was past ten, more eleven -
I was traveling with my heart heavy,
And where the bus let me off by
Letting me slide off the foot board,
...
Our lives are note pads, the
Kind on which we sketch with deliberate pen,
With refillable ink, with a pause for thought
Before a doodled smiley, now and then.
...
One June I walked out that door
Thinking that that was it; that
I would not return there again —
And as I walked down through the
...
The song that was written for you
On a guitar with just four surviving strings
— For over a decade that bane of an instrument lay
Serene among cobwebs, debris and distant things —
...
A friend from mid teens,
Who said for love he'll take his life,
Met me, a decade later, at
An obscure pharmacy with a
...