Vajra Chandrasekera

@vajra

Writer, Colombo. Wrote THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS (2023, Nebula, Ignyte, Crawford, and Locus awards) & RAKESFALL (2024, Le Guin Prize and Otherwise award.)

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Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y vajra.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 1d

In their own words:

The Sameer Project started from a desire to help our Palestinian people differently - with dignity, without conditions, and in a way that returned agency instead of creating dependency.

We continued because the genocide continued.

And now, we are devastated to say that The Sameer Project is being forced to pause our daily operations.

Not because the need has decreased. Because the money has run out.

We are panicking. We are stressed. We are heartbroken because we know exactly what this pause means for the people who rely on us.

Mothers still need to feed their children. Families still need drinking water. The elderly and sick still need medication. People are still being killed in airstrikes and shootings while the occupation continues to manufacture deprivation by restricting aid.

We have always been an emergency response group. When you donated, we spent that money immediately on people who needed help NOW. We did not save it for some predictable tomorrow, because in Gaza tomorrow has never been promised.

Now we are reaching a point we never wanted to reach: we do not have enough coming in to keep responding.

This pause is not administrative. It is not harmless. When food, water, medicine, transportation, and emergency assistance disappear, people can die.

We desperately need you to understand the urgency of this moment.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 1d

If you can at all afford it, please sign up for a recurring donation, any amount no matter how low, so that they have a predictable budget to work with and can continue operations even if at a lower scale. news.un.org/en/story/202...

Crisis-level hunger

Latest analysis by the UN-backed global food security monitor IPC reveals that 1.4 million people, 67 per cent of Gaza’s population, are experiencing crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity, classified as IPC Phase 3 or above.

Although this represents a decrease from 1.6 million people, or 77 per cent of the population, at the end of last year, some 212,000 people remain in emergency conditions, or IPC Phase 4.

Many of them are living in areas near the Israeli-controlled “Yellow Line” where access to humanitarian aid and essential services remains especially difficult.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 4d

Lie Bot from Achewood (the strip of April 3, 2006 if you want to look it up) says: "The End! No moral."

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 4d

Here's a thread I posted myself in August of that year, for instance, several months before the Wordcraft paper was published. I had no special insight or access then as now: these are ordinary opinions for someone who'd been paying attention to the burgeoning slop problem since the twenty-teens.

Screenshot of twitter thread from 8:05 PM · Aug 31, 2022. Tweets read as follows:

fiction that reduces to over 90% trope manipulation will def be the first to be automated with an array of AI thing-generators, which might sound good at first to people who hate writing and only wish to Have Written/Published, but consider that authors are superfluous in this

my luddite opinion about AI thing-generators is that they are an abomination, not least because their product relies on vast bodies of training data and crowdsourced training from writers and artists who will never receive recognition, never mind compensation

(certainly nothing commensurate with future profits these technologies and their direct descendants will generate for their corporate owners: this is enclosure in action)

but also because the automations of "content generation" of all artistic low-hanging fruit that they presage means that many present and future artists lose spaces that were training grounds, income opportunities, ways to get a foot in the door

especially for people historically marginalized in this and every other sector, who have not had mass access to the ability to make art for money, and are kind of only just getting that access now

Visual art is going to be hit hard by this long before prose fiction—probably already happening—and I think it is probably time that writers begin thinking of AI thing-generators less as a cute toy and more as a labour rights issue and a burgeoning attack on artists' livelihoods

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 4d

enjoyed this conversation about Jerry Falade et al. but also clicked through to the linked NYT article from earlier this year, about Coral Hart, where I was particularly struck by this paragraph

A longtime romance novelist who has been published by Harlequin and Mills & Boon, Ms. Hart was always a fast writer. Working on her own, she released 10 to 12 books a year under five pen names, on top of ghostwriting. But with the help of A.I., Ms. Hart can publish books at an astonishing rate. Last year, she produced more than 200 romance novels in a range of subgenres, from dark mafia romances to sweet teen stories, and self-published them on Amazon. None were huge blockbusters, but collectively, they sold around 50,000 copies, earning Ms. Hart six figures.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 6d

the lee cronin's mummy

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 8d

like, to me optimus prime is a truck. *this* beautiful thing is a lorry

picture of a lorry, in this case an old-fashioned Sri Lankan truck. I don't really know how to describe it. It's colourful, has writing on it. the cab is open at the sides and the back is half-open. there's a metal railing on the roof where more stuff can be piled. They were (and still are, though less so as more modern trucks become widely available) common sights on South Asian streets.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· 21d

cathartic

Eggers was invited after he excoriated CEO Sam Altman for gushing over an AI-generated short story.

In March 2025, Altman said he was “really struck” by a short story about AI and grief — which was widely panned as being “just trash” and an “atrocious piece of writing” that would’ve gotten a first-year creative writing student a failing grade.

Eggers was also unimpressed, telling the FT he thought the story was “pastiche nonsense” and wondered “just how gullible and ridiculous you’d have to be to think that there would ever be an AI novel that anybody would read?”

In an apparent attempt to prove him wrong, OpenAI invited him to talk to its workers — and Eggers relished the opportunity to set the record straight.

He told the staff that the “effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic,” adding that “whether you intended to do it or not, you’ve made every teacher’s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago.”

“If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write,” he added. “And their voice is stolen from them. They’ll never have the ability to say their truth and tell their own story. And that’s silencing an entire generation or two.”

Eggers also had some advice for an employee who said they had used ChatGPT to write a poem: to touch grass.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jul 7

don't mind me im literally on a beach

a single line of footprints on a sandy beach: it was then that I carried you

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jul 4

😐 www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Oremus: Some of your posts on LinkedIn, as people have pointed out, are a very different style from your fiction. Which, of course, makes sense, right? I mean, fiction is a completely different mode of writing. But I wondered if maybe you used AI on the LinkedIn posts.

Nazir: No, no, no. I did research with AI. But in terms of the actual writing—I had grown accustomed to very technical and precise writing. I think that AI is a good tool for research— that’s the most value.

And on the same topic of that, what about the typewriter? When the typewriter was first invented, writers kicked hell and said, The thing is writing. You’re supposed to use a quill or your fountain pen. And there was a big hullabaloo. We passed that, and then next came new word processors. I can tell you word processors are machine assistants, because they can check the spelling, right? They can search, find and replace, suggest synonyms, et cetera. Modern-day word processing can do almost everything. Where’s the uproar? It settled down. Now I think the same thing will happen with AI.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jun 5

😁 thank you!!! and also great thread lol. here is a complimentary picture of a former Sri Lankan president (pro-genocide, naturally; in fact, he was the acting defense minister during the genocide in 2009) doing yoga in a pro-genocide way

Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka 2015-2019, does yoga in a park. He is sort of stretched out in a superman-in-flight pose, I don't know the yoga word for it. The subtitle says "Ours is the only country in the world that has permanently"—it cuts off there but I assure you what came next was supremely racist

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· May 23

A Deep Space Nine title screen. The text says "Aye, And Gomorrah..."

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· May 20

yes ... ha ha ha ... YES! PLASTIC, PRISM, VOID, the debut novel by Violet Allen from @littlepuss.net. I'm so glad this came out before I left the US (if there is going to be a part two later I will have to figure that out)

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· May 1

already deep into packing up books for my impending return to the tropics, but could not resist grabbing a copy of THIS YEAR by @themountaingoats.bsky.social

I'm holding up a hardcover copy of THIS YEAR: A Book of Days, 365 Songs Annotated by John Darnielle

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Apr 20

Also if you read Polish, the translation just came out! Photo from the Empik bookstore in Kraków by @andreamorstabilini.bsky.social

A copy of the Polish translation of THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS sitting face out on a bookstore shelf

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Apr 2

It went well, I think! The presentation was about the book I'm currently writing, as part of the fellowship I'm on, and I shall try and convert some of it to an essay/blog post. Will be working on this book for a while yet. (Pic courtesy of Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk)

A photo of me at a lectern at the New York Public Library. I am quite hairy.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Apr 2

This is happening tomorrow btw, at the Graham Center at Florida International University in Miami. I am zooming in and will apparently be inside one of those telepresence robot things, and hopefully they will let me drive it around and do a stage dive www.scienceandfiction.fiu.edu/confab-26

FIU's Science & Fiction Lab Presents: Fourth Annual Science & Fiction Confab (Book Signing to Follow)

(with)
Pedro Cabiya
Vajra Chandrasekera
Ana Menéndez
Ian Tregillis

Thursday, April 2, 1pm
FIU Graham Center 140 | SW 8th St. Miami

This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP: go.fiu.edu/confab-26
More info: scienceandfiction.fiu.edu/confab-26

US National Science Fiction
FIU Science & Fiction Lab

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jan 20

This is the second (of two!) issue of the Deadlands for which I was guest editor for fiction! Stories by Alan Fisher, Marischa Pichette, Dmitri Akers, Jeremy Morris, Joe Koch, Aliya Whiteley, and Sadoeuphemist, and with another lovely, stark cover from @carlydraws.bsky.social

Cover art for Deadlands issue 41, Winter 2026. The cover art by Carly A-F shows a lone figure heading up a twisting path to a giant skull-shaped mountain under a cloudy, turbulent night sky. Author names on the cover are Suttee, Lee, Koch, Morris, lindsey, Akers, Whitely, Pichette, Fisher, Sadoeuphemist, Mani

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jan 16

I will be one of the speakers/mentors at the Indian Ocean Writers’ Residency in Bentota, Sri Lanka from July 9‒15 2026. Applications close at the end of January—please do apply if you're interested, and share with anyone else who might be! vajra.me/2026/01/16/i...

Indian Ocean Writers’ Residency Call for Applications in Bentota, Sri Lanka from July 9‒15 2026. Partial or full scholarships are available. The residency is hosted by Tambapanni Academic Publishers, Colombo, in collaboration with the Max Weber Forum, New Delhi. With mentorship from Sri Lankan author Vajra Chandrasekera (winner of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction) and other Sri Lankan and international scholars and writers. The course director is Amal Chatterjee from the University of Oxford. The deadline for applications is January 31st 2026. For further information, visit www.tambapannipublishers.lk or email tapresidency@tambapannipublishers.lk

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Dec 2

From Hasini (ssmiggle85 on Instagram) who's been funnelling Venmo donations from the US to on-the-ground relief efforts in Sri Lanka. If you'd like to help out and Wise/direct bank transfers have been giving you trouble, please Venmo @sinjaya!

From Hasini (ssmiggle85 on Instagram):

CYCLONE RELIEF
Sri Lanka has been hit with the largest cyclone in recent history, with over 300 people who have passed away and over 300 people still missing. Over a million people's homes and livelihoods have been lost and they have been displaced.

I am fundraising from the US to send to Saritha Irugalbandara (Instagram @sarithairugal) and her team who are donating much needed medications, sanitary napkins, and diapers to most impacted communities.

1 USD = 308 LKR (to put it in perspective, the highest denomination bill we have in Sri Lanka is Rs. 5000 bill, which is close to USD $16) so your donations small and large really go a large way and can help multitudes of communities.

Please send any financial donations to my Venmo: @sinjaya. I am sending them via WISE, an international transfer app. For any more information feel free to DM me at ssmiggle85.

Would you like to help out? Venmo: @sinjaya

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Oct 15

This is the wonderful cover by @carlydraws.bsky.social for the October issue of The Deadlands @thedeadlands.com—for which I had the great pleasure of being the fiction guest editor!—with stories by Malena Salazar Maciá, Testimony Odey, Erin Ulm, Laila Amado, Jason Pearce, Kat Sedia, and Scott Payne

$The cover of The Deadlands Issue 40, Fall 2025. Subtitled "a journal of ends and beginnings". Author names on the cover are Maciá, Biscotti, Odey, Ross, Ulm, Wollin, Amado, Pearce, Lemberg, Sedia, Romano, and Payne. The cover art shows a fractured red sky, maze-like with golden fissures, surrounds a golden skull at the top of a long, golden path awaiting a lone figure.$

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Sep 9

Unfortunately the judge on the case seems very concerned with protecting Anthropic from future suits news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/anthr...

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Aug 23

nightshade for writers: it's a simple technological fix

How do we become inedible to the machine? The visual artists, our beloved cousins, have more tools to poison their data against the colonizers of AI, but what’s there for those of us who work with only words? How do we become inedible to the machine? How do we poison it? Here is my answer: the machine will shake your tree and peel your oranges, but it can only eat the rind, so fill your vesicles with strange juices. The machine cannot understand even the fundamental cells of storytelling (metaphor &c.) much less the more complex organs and frames that we grow to support our stories—the reverse walpolitical manoeuvre, for instance, as a political-ethical-narratological exoskeleton—so it can only approximate the flavedo, and perhaps an albedo may be suggested as an accidental byproduct of a reader’s pareidolia, but beyond that there is only a hollow. Become more than the rind of yourself, and you’ll have employment yet for the rest of your days.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Aug 17

A running human skeleton against a blue gradient background. No text, but it's the template image for the "Just Walk Out, You Can Leave" meme from the twentyteens.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Aug 1

nutshellnails on insta did nail art for RAKESFALL—a book that has a whole extended Ramayana nail art bit!—and I appreciate this greatly! “If you like multiverses, reincarnations, alternate timelines, highly detailed, surrealist work—you'll love this like I did.” See www.instagram.com/p/DMzFmEcgk9e/

Snippet of one of the photos showing the RAKESFALL book cover nail art, with the hare's skull on the thumbnail.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jul 13

There are a lot of ebooks included in the sale, so click through to find out what's available where you are: geni.us/Solarissale

All the 0.99 ebooks available on the Solaris #StillProud sale! Website exclusive, ends midnight 14th July 2025. DRM free. Titles available will vary by country. Books include NINEFOX GAMBIT, BLACK SUN, THE SPEAR CUTS THROUGH WATER, THE DEATH I GAVE HIM, IF FOUND RETURN TO HELL, THE WATER OUTLAWS, INTERSTELLAR MEGACHEF, and more.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jul 13

Last-minute shoppers, a reminder that this sale ends tomorrow! Get 0.99p DRM-free ebooks from the Solaris website at geni.us/Solarissale

Solaris #StillProud 0.99 ebook sale for my second novel RAKESFALL. Website exclusive, ends midnight 14th July 2025. DRM free. Titles available will vary by country.

Solaris #StillProud 0.99 ebook sale for my first novel THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS. Website exclusive, ends midnight 14th July 2025. DRM free. Titles available will vary by country.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jul 4

Ebook sale! For the next ten days, Solaris is selling (giving away, really) an excellent selection of modern SFF titles at 0.99p in the UK, including both of my novels, THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS and RAKESFALL. See geni.us/Solarissale! Some titles are available outside the UK, too.

Promotional graphic from Solaris in rainbow colours, with the covers of my two novels THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS and RAKESFALL with a price tag icon saying 0.99. The text says: #StillProud 0.99 ebook sale! Website exclusive. Ends 23;59 14th July '25. DRM free. Titles available wiill vary by country.

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· Jun 21

oh right the qt goes away when I block them myself lol. here, for your blocking needs

"AI is an opportunity disguised as a problem. AI helps with mechanics—research, structural suggestions, brainstorming — & I’m free to do the work only a human can do: finding emotional truth and making unexpected connections." ~ @allisonkwilliams.bsky.social
https://brevity.wordpress.com/2025/06/19/writing-with-ai/ posted by Brevity Magazine/editor Dinty W. Moore @dintywmoore.bsky.social

Vajra Chandrasekera@vajra· May 31

getting a lot of boss baby vibes from this