Ciara Mandulee Mendis is an award-winning Sri Lankan writer whose debut collection of short stories ‘The Lanka Box’ won the State Literary Award and the Godage National Award for Best Collection of Short Stories of the year 2023. ‘The Lanka Box’, and her earlier manuscript ‘The Red Brick Wall’ were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize in 2020 and 2021, the most coveted prize awarded for Sri Lankan writing in English. Ciara was also shortlisted for the 2025 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation for ‘Grandmothers, Granddaughters and Other Women’.
Her work has appeared in Riptide Journal (UK), Queen’s Quarterly (Canada), The Midway Journal (USA), Southeast Asian Review of English (Malaysia), The Bombay Review (India),Himal Southasian (Nepal), Aleph Review (Pakistan), Brussels Review (Belgium), Contemporary Literary Review of India (India) and several other international journals.
Her story published in ‘Anthology of Short Stories: Spring 2022’ (Fenechty Publishing, UK) received the Editor’s Choice Award. One of her short stories, along with its Bangla translation, was recently published in Bangladesh in the collection titled South Asian Stories of Women Writers. She was the first to introduce Virginia Woolf to Sinhala readers through her translation of A Room of One’s Own.
She holds an M.A. in English Studies and, when not writing about rebellious women and
whimsical cities, she is busy serving her country, quite literally, as a Civil Service Officer.
Her travelogue ‘Gallivanting’ was launched in Colombo in September 2025, and her first
collection of short stories in Sinhala ‘Api Wagey Aya’ will be published later this year.
