Guy Amirthanayagam was Sri Lanka’s deputy ambassador to Britain. He settled in the DC area in the mid-1970s after retiring from diplomatic service, teaching English at Montgomery College and the University of the District of Columbia, and contributing book reviews to the Washington Post.
Amirthanayagam is the author of four books of poems, Selected Poems (2002), The Face and the Dream (1999), New Verse (1990), and Poems (1974), and author or editor of several books of criticism, including The Marriage of Continents: Multiculturalism in Modern Literature (2000), Asian and Western Writers in Dialogue: New Cultural Identities (1982), Writers in East-West Encounter (1981), and Only Connect: Literary Perspectives East and West (1981).
A graduate of the University of Ceylon and Syracuse University (where he earned an MA in American literature), Amirthanayagam raised a family of five children, one of whom, Indran Amirthanyagam, also became a poet and diplomat.