Yasmine & Devika
Emeritus Professor Yasmine Gooneratne and Dr Devika Brendon are teachers, students, and writers of literary criticism and creative work, including poetry, short stories and novels. They are also mother and daughter.
Yasmine Gooneratne, a distinguished Sri Lankan-born novelist and essayist, has received international accolades such as the Order of Australia, for services to Education and Literature, the Raja Rao Award (India) and the Sahityaratna Award (Sri Lanka). Renowned for her expertise in Jane Austen and the work of postcolonial writers, she is the Patron of the Jane Austen Society of Australia. Among her novels, A Change Of Skies won the Marjorie Barnard Literary Prize in 1992, and The Sweet And Simple Kind was shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award in 2008. Retired, she is currently working on a new novel, ‘Light Reading’, while residing in Sri Lanka.
Devika Brendon’s poetry and short stories have been published extensively in literary journals and anthologies in Australia, India and Sri Lanka. She is currently working on her first novel, ‘Aversion’, due to be published by Jam Fruit Tree Publishing this year.
