Chandani Lokuge came to Australia from Sri Lanka. Her parents, she says in a personal communication, are an interesting mixture of cultures and religions. Her father is a conservative Buddhist Sinhalese from the hill country of Sri Lanka, and her mother a westernised Christian Sinhalese from the coastal region. She has one brother, a 'criminal' lawyer practising in Colombo. Chandani grew up mainly in Colombo, her primary and secondary education being at St Bridget's Convent, Colombo.
Lokuge's first short story was published in the school's annual journal. Her happiest memories are of Gampola, her father's village, nestled in the depths of the hill country. This is possibly, she says, because it was so different from life in Colombo. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Kelaniya. Here she experienced professional editing for the first time, having been on the editorial board of the English Journal. She completed her Master of Arts degree here also, and came to Australia in 1987 on a Commonwealth Scholarship to read for a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the Centre for Research in the New Literatures in English at Flinders University. She has lectured and tutored in English at Flinders University, and completed her doctorate in 1993. She moved to Melbourne to lecture at Monash University and was appointed Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Writing.
Lokuge is widely anthologized in various issues of Kunapipi journal and has contributed stories to The Penguin Anthology of Modern Sri Lankan Stories (1966) and Shifting Continents/Colliding Cultures : Diaspora Writing of the Indian Subcontinent (2000).
Lokuge edited a series of six books written by pioneering Indian women writers in the Oxford University Press series, Oxford India Classic Reissue. The works include India Calling (2001), the autobiography of Cornelia Sorabji (1866-1952), India's first woman barrister, and Sorabji's short story Love and Life Behind the Purdah (2003); Toru Dutt : Collected Prose and Poetry (2006) the collected works of poet and writer Toru Dutt (1857-1877); Ratanbai : A High-Caste Child-Wife (2004) a novel by Shevantibai M. Nikambe (b. 1865); and two novels by Krupabai Satthianadhan (1862-1894) Kamala : The Story of a Hindu Life (1998) and Saguna : The First Autobiographical Novel in English by an Indian Woman (1998).
