Vajra Chandrasekera

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-18

Vajra Chandrasekera was born on August 17, 1979, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the son of a writer and civil servant. He began his career at eighteen writing fake product reviews of computer hardware before working as a non-fiction editor in Sri Lanka. He has since published more than fifty short stories in magazines such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Apex Magazine, and served as a fiction editor at Strange Horizons during six consecutive years in which the magazine was a Hugo Award finalist. His debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors (2023), won the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2024 Locus Award for Best First Novel, the 2024 Crawford Award, and the 2024 Ignyte Award, and was shortlisted for the Hugo Award and the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. His second novel, Rakesfall (2024), won the 2024 Otherwise Award and the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, and was nominated for the Nebula and Locus awards. Chandrasekera identifies his work with the New Wave, New Weird, slipstream, and science fantasy traditions, using speculative structures to explore colonialism, bureaucracy, and myth. He held a 2025-2026 fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Saint of Bright Doors (2023) · The Saint of Bright Doors Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 3 (2 won, 1 nomination)

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