Press
Information for journalists, programmers, festival organisers, and award committees. For interview requests, rights enquiries, or media questions, contact Stevie Finegan at finegan [at] zenoagency [dot] com.
Bios
Short (50 words)
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a Sri Lankan author and researcher. His novels include The Salvage Crew, Numbercaste, and The Inhuman Race. He is a Gratiaen Prize winner, Nebula Award nominee, Forbes 30 Under 30, and Open Society Fellow. He lives in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
Medium (100 words)
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a Sri Lankan science fiction author, programmer, and researcher. His novels - including The Salvage Crew, Numbercaste, and The Inhuman Race - explore AI, power, and post-colonial futures. The Salvage Crew was a Washington Post and Audible bestseller. His short fiction has appeared in Wired, the Big Book of Cyberpunk, and has been commissioned by the Lancet and the Financial Times. He co-founded Watchdog, one of Sri Lanka’s leading fact-checking and OSINT operations. He is a Gratiaen Prize winner, Nebula Award nominee, Dangerous Speech Fellow, TEDx speaker, Forbes 30 Under 30, and current Open Society Fellow (2025). He lives in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
Full bio
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a Sri Lankan science fiction author, programmer, and researcher based in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
His debut novel Numbercaste (2017) imagined a near-future social credit system built not by governments but by Silicon Valley. The Salvage Crew (2020) - a Washington Post and Audible bestseller. The series continues with Pilgrim Machines (2024) and Choir of Hatred (2025). His Commonwealth Empire trilogy (The Inhuman Race, The Inhuman Peace, The Inhuman War) examines colonialism, AI, and civilizational collapse across an interstellar empire. His short fiction has appeared in Wired, the Big Book of Cyberpunk (Vintage/Penguin Random House), Future Tense (ASU/Slate), and has been commissioned by the Lancet and the Financial Times.
Beyond fiction, Wijeratne co-founded Watchdog Sri Lanka, a fact-checking and data journalism operation that became one of the country’s primary OSINT resources during the 2022 economic collapse. His misinformation research has been covered by the New York Times, BBC, and Foreign Policy. He also writes fantasy under the pen name Victor Konara.
He is a Gratiaen Prize winner, Nebula Award nominee, Dangerous Speech Fellow, TEDx speaker, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, and Open Society Fellow (2025).
Awards and recognition
| Award / Recognition | Work | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Nebula Award nomination | Messenger (with R.R. Virdi) | 2018 |
| TEDx Speaker | TEDxColombo | 2018 |
| Washington Post Bestseller | The Salvage Crew | 2020 |
| Audible Bestseller | The Salvage Crew | 2020 |
| Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia | - | 2021 |
| IGF Excellence in Narrative nomination | Neurocracy (contributor) | 2021 |
| Dangerous Speech Fellow | - | 2022–2023 |
| Gratiaen Prize (joint win, 30th) | The Wretched and the Damned | 2023 |
| Open Society Fellow | - | 2025 |
Coverage
Fiction, research, and journalism have been covered by:
New York Times · BBC · Foreign Policy · Rest of World · Niemann Lab · Wired · Huffpost · The Hindu · Strange Horizons · Religion News · Himal SouthAsian · Polygon
Research and nonfiction
Wijeratne has published widely on natural language processing, misinformation, hate speech, and low-resource languages. His Google Scholar profile lists peer-reviewed work in computational social science, corpus linguistics, and applied machine learning. Longform investigations and data journalism are at watchdog.team.
Author photo
High-resolution version available on request: finegan [at] zenoagency [dot] com
Book covers
High-resolution cover images are available on request. Contact finegan [at] zenoagency [dot] com.
Media contact
Agent: Stevie Finegan, Zeno Agency finegan [at] zenoagency [dot] com
Direct (slower response): hello [at] yudhanjaya [dot] com