Nedra Rodrigo is the founder of the Tamil Studies Symposium at York University, and the bilingual event series, The Tam Fam Lit Jam. She is a translator, academic, curator of Multi-arts events and a Member of the Board of Directors for the Tamil Community Centre Project in Scarborough, Ontario. Rodrigo’s manuscript "The Forest That Took Poison," a translation of Kuna Kaviyazhakan’s Tamil novel Nanjunda Kaadu, was shortlisted for the 2017 Global Humanities Initiative translation prize. Rodrigo's published translations include: In the Shadow of the Sword (SAGE Yoda, 2020); His Sacred Army and A Time of Questions, Vols. 1 & 2 of the Devakanthan quintet Prison of Dreams (Mawenzi House 2021). Her essays have appeared in Kalam, Briarpatch, C Magazine, Studies in Canadian Literature and Human Rights and the Arts: Essays on Global Asia; and her translations of poetry have featured in Words and Worlds, Jaggery Lit, Still We Sing: Voices on Violence Against Women, Human Rights and the Arts in Global Asia, and are forthcoming in Out of Sri Lanka (Bloodaxe Press, 2023). Her translation of Vol. 3, 4 and 5 of Prison of Dreams is forthcoming with Mawenzi House in 2023-2024; Her essay "Crossing Terrains: Unsettling Tinai While Translating Tamil" from which this passage is excerpted, appears in river in an ocean –– essays on translation (trace press, 2023).