Adilah Ismail

An article on the Sri Lankan women activists at the center of a decades-long battle to reform the country’s Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act.

Wrote a short primer on recent writers writing on and from Sri Lanka and making their mark on the literary circuit.

Wrote a 2024 Colombo guide for Conde Nast Traveler on where/what to eat, shop and do.

An interview with restauranteur and cookbook author, Cynthia Shanmugalingam, on food, cooking and her Tamil heritage.

A personal essay on grief, identity and the pandemic.

Recently, Sri Lankan Muslim women have galvanized under the hashtag #LetHerSign on social media, speaking out about being unable to sign their marriage documents. Sri Lankan Muslim women are also often absent at their own marriage registration ceremonies.

Sri Lanka is one of the few Muslim family laws around the world which exclude Muslim women from the nikah process to a large extent.

This is a tale of 5 nikahs. I'm very grateful to everyone who was generous with their time and resources for this piece and for the women who trusted me with their stories.

"The ‘Gotagogama’ library follows a tradition of libraries at protest sites and the emphasis placed on public learning in citizen-led resistance. Recently in India, libraries were a fixture in the farmers’ protests and at the Shaheen Bagh protest in Delhi. People’s libraries were also a part of the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, the Occupy Wall Street movements in the US and the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in Egypt.

A lot has already been written about ‘Gotagogama’. Perhaps what the protest space ultimately offers is a public space for reimagining."

A Q&A with Shehan soon after his Booker win. In his own words: "For Sri Lankan writers, I’d say find the story that moves you and that no one else can tell. And then make time and space in your life to read and write every day. If you spend an hour writing every day, in 12 months you’ll have something. It may not be good, but it will be something you can build on. Be patient. Be kind with yourself and ruthless with the work. But please keep writing, there are so many Sri Lankan stories to tell."

A highlight on four cultural and community spaces in Colombo that are making their mark.

In this email interview with Adilah Ismail, the editors behind a new anthology of poetry share their lengthy process and many challenges in bringing it together. Out of Sri Lanka is the first-ever anthology to bring together Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry. Published in 2023 in India and the UK, it features diverse poems of a mix of styles, place and time.

Members of Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaha Tamil community travelled from Thalaimannar to Matale by foot to mark 200 years since their south Indian ancestors’ arrival in Sri Lanka. A piece on the roots of the Malaiyaha Tamils' struggle and the 250km walk they undertook.

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka moved to a new space and opened a new exhibition. It's very, very strange to write about art when the country is slow burning and every day is a struggle. In many ways, parts of the MMCA's exhibition and its choice of new location offers up modes of making sense of where Sri Lanka is now, through a cultural lens.

Artist and activist Kamala Vasuki discusses her art, activism and her work as a community-based artist.

Social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have seen an increase of food-related content from users based in Sri Lanka. Three food bloggers -- Anoma's kitchen, Yarl Samayal and Wild Cookbook -- shared their stories and their food journeys.

The online archive of Dissidents and Activists in Sri Lanka from the 1960s to 1990s was launched earlier this year and is centred on the theme of dissent, documenting the activity of Sri Lankan activists within a particular generation who challenged the existing political and social status quo.