Indran Amirthanayagam

Indran Amirthanayagam is a Sri Lankan-American poet-diplomat, essayist and translator in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He is a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, based currently in Rockville, Maryland.

Amirthanayagam has published seventeen poetry collections, including The Elephants Of Reckoning (1993) which won the 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Coconut on Mars (2019). His poem "Juarez" won the Juegos Florales of Guaymas, Sonora in 2006. His new book, The Migrant States, has just been published by Hanging Loose Press (www.spdbooks.org).

Amirthanayagam is a recipient of the Superior Honor Award and the Meritorious Honor Award from the Department of State for his diplomatic work. He is a 2020 grantee in poetry from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts. He has also received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony.