Indran Amirthanayagam was born in 1960 in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). When eight years old, he moved with his family to London, and at 14 to Honolulu, Hawaii. He began writing in Honolulu. Indran Amirthanayagam's The Elephants Of Reckoning won the 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize. He writes poetry and essays in English, Spanish and French. He is a diplomat serving for the United States of America, based currently in Vancouver, Canada.