Daya Dissanayake
Sri Lankan writer
Daya Dissanayake (born 8 March 1947) is a bilingual Sri Lankan novelist, poet and blogger. His work spans a critical study of king Ashoka, nine novels in English, six novels in Sinhala and a collection of poems, and numerous articles in newspapers, journals and magazines. He is the author of the first e-novel in Asia, 'The Saadhu Testament' (1998), and the first e-novel in Sinhala, 'Vessan Novu Wedun' (2003). His first nonfiction work is "Who is Ashoka?" He is the only Sri Lankan writer to receive the Sri Lankan State Literary Award for the best English novel three times and was awarded the SAARC Literary Award in 2013. Being the first Sri Lankan to release his work online and for free access, he is often seen as one of Sri Lanka's earliest and most vocal advocates for the ebook format, copyleft and Creative Commons.
Early life
Dayananda Dissanayake (he later shortened his name to Daya) was born on 8 March 1947 in Galle, Sri Lanka. He has five siblings and is the eldest offspring of Albert Dissanayake and Agnus Wavala Panditha. Daya first attended Southland Balika Vidyalaya, later joining St. Aloysius College, where he remained until after his G.C.E A/L examinations. Daya lost his father at the age of fourteen, and was largely raised by his mother and his father's younger brother, Mahinda Dissanayake; his mother wove cotton saris at home and his uncle supported them with his salary as a teacher, Galle.
“Daya Dissanayake” enters the record as sri Lankan writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Daya, Dissanayake and Lankan can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27978955. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1998, 2003 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Daya Dissanayake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.