Author Profile

The author with dog Tina in 1970s

The author with her dog, Tina, in the 1970s.

Srianthi Perera is a journalist who has lived and worked in Sri Lanka, the Sultanate of Oman, Canada and the United States.

She has written hundreds of articles over the years, which have been published in newspapers and magazines. She has covered many topics, ranging from local government issues, neighborhoods and communities to arts, entertainment, history, books and travel.  

An avid traveler, she has explored dozens of museums and photographed sites all over the world. In her desire to know more about the world, she has walked as many miles as her feet could tolerate.

Among her favorite memories are the following:

Meeting the Bedu in the soft, orange dunes of Wahiba Sands, Oman.

Crawling along the subterranean, early Christian hideouts in Göreme, Turkey.

Enjoying the incongruous sight in Petra, Jordan of young men riding camels while preoccupied with their cellphones. Also, floating in the Dead Sea in Jordan.

Cruising the Panama Canal, where she observed ships squeezing through the water locks of the great canal.

Listening to Ave Maria inside the purple-shaded, underground Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá, Colombia.

Getting lost in the labyrinthine streets of the Fez Medina, Morocco.  

Cuddling a rather heavy—and somewhat lazy—wombat in Melbourne, Australia.

Running a few yards on the ancient racetrack where the Olympic Games originated in Olympia, Greece.

Experiencing the tranquility of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan.

While immersed in her busy journalism career, she wrote her first book, A Maiden’s Prayer. The novel recalls her own coming of age reminiscences in tropical Sri Lanka in the 1970s. But it has its more immediate roots in a 2000 winter workshop in Rochester, New York, after she moved there from Canada.

Subsequent chapters were written in other states as she followed her husband on his career journey. When they settled in Arizona, the manuscript was nearly complete. With help from a Chandler writers’ group called Serious Scribes, she hashed out the consequences of her characters and the story’s ultimate ending. 

Publishing the novel was her ultimate pandemic project. 

Write to her at evocativejourneys@gmail.com.