Sonali Deraniyagala is a Sri Lankan writer and economist. Born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she is an alumna of Cambridge University, she earned her doctorate from the University of Oxford. Sonali now serves as faculty at the University of London in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental & African Studies and concurrently as a research scholar at Columbia University. She is also a survivor of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami though she lost her sons, her husband, and her parents in the catastrophe that killed 230,000 others. She wrote about her experience and loss in her award-winning 2013 memoir, "Wave". She is now married to actress Fiona Shaw. #LGBTQHistory #QTPOCHistory #SonaliDeraniyagala #Intersectionality