Yasmine Gooneratne was a Sri Lankan poet, short story writer, university professor and essayist.
19 Facts About Yasmine Gooneratne
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Yasmine Gooneratne was recognised in Sri Lanka, Australia, throughout Europe, and the United States, due to her substantial creative and critical publications in the field of English and post-colonial literature.
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Yasmine Gooneratne held a personal chair in English as a Professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, and held an Emeritus position after her retirement.
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Yasmine Gooneratne was awarded Australia's highest national honour, the Order of Australia, in 1990, for her services to Education and Literature.
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Yasmine Gooneratne was awarded the Raja Rao Award in 2001, for 'Outstanding Contribution To The Literature and Culture Of The South Asian Diaspora.
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Yasmine Gooneratne was honoured with Sri Lanka's Sahithyarathna Award for a lifetime achievement in Literature at The State Literary Festival in 2008.
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Yasmine Gooneratne was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in 1990 by the Australian government for her distinguished services to literature and education, the only Sri Lankan to have received this honour.
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Yasmine Gooneratne died on 15 February 2024, at the age of 88.
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Yasmine Gooneratne was one of the leading contributors to the field of English literature in Sri Lanka, and Australia, as a creative writer, an academic and literary critic, and as a lecturer, particularly in the areas of eighteenth-century literature, Jane Austen's novels, and post-colonial literature.
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Yasmine Gooneratne was the founder and director of the Centre for Post-Colonial Literature and Language Studies at Macquarie University.
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Yasmine Gooneratne was the patron of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, a position to which she was appointed in 1990.
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Yasmine Gooneratne founded the literary journal New Ceylon Writing in 1970, to publish the creative writing of Sri Lankan writers in English.
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Yasmine Gooneratne wrote two academic books for Cambridge University Press, on Jane Austen and Alexander Pope.
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Yasmine Gooneratne has published 16 books with themes of post-colonial cultural tensions, both in creative fiction and literary criticism.
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In 1999, Yasmine Gooneratne co-wrote, with her husband, This Inscrutable Englishman, a biography of Sir John D'Oyly, a civil servant in British Colonial Sri Lanka.
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Yasmine Gooneratne edited Stories from Sri Lanka and Poems from India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, titles in the Writing in Asia Series published from 1966 to 1996.
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In 1990, Yasmine Gooneratne was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to Literature and Education.
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In 2001, Yasmine Gooneratne was given the Raja Rao Award in India, for her contributions to the Literature and Culture of the South Asian Diaspora.
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In 2008, Yasmine Gooneratne was given the Sahithyarathna Award in Sri Lanka.