Roshi Fernando

Roshi Fernando is an English writer of Sri Lankan origin.

Quotes

• … I think my attitude has changed – before, I was on my own, trying to break through into the world on the other side of a slippery glass wall. Now I’m on that other side, I feel I have to work harder. And I do. I don’t always love the work I do – but I know I’m one of the luckiest people alive to be doing what I always wanted.
  • On being a published writer in "Interview With Roshi Fernando" in Writers & Artists

• …I think my biggest frustration has been my own constant undermining of my self-belief. You have to be slightly psychopathic to become a writer: it’s like any business, actually. To be successful, you have to have tunnel vision – but as this is totally irrational because you’re focusing all this energy on yourself, you end up questioning your own sanity!
  • On the road to publication in "Interview With Roshi Fernando" in Writers & Artists

• … I tried not to dwell on it: sensationalising something like that is simply unacceptable. But it happens in so many families, and it must be faced head on. I was saying, Look: even in these immigrant, hard working, well-respected communities, this happens.
  • On writing about sexual abuse in "INTERVIEW by Gwen Davies" in New Welsh Reader (Issue 92)

• …I think I was writing from a position of frustration and perhaps anger – about the rise of the far right and the pandering of consecutive governments to the Daily Mail and its equivalents who fulminate about multiculturalism and do not acknowledge the great good that immigration has done. I wanted to rebalance the arguments.
  • On the inspiration for her work Homesick in "Roshi Fernando" in The Asian Writer (2012 Apr 24)