Trained as a sociologist and having worked and studied in Los Angeles, after a short period in Geneva, Ameena Hussein returned to live in Sri Lanka in 2003. She is the co-founder of the Perera Hussein Publishing House which publishes cutting edge Sri Lankan fiction. She divides her time between Colombo and her country home where she grows trees to offset the environmental pollution in printing books. She has published two award winning collections of short stories, Fifteen and Zillij and in 2009 published her first novel, The Moon in the Water