Born in 1967 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Channa Wickremesekera attended Royal College Colombo and then Monash University in Melbourne, where he obtained his Ph.D. in South Asian History in 1998. Although he began writing fiction early in life, he placed this passion on hold while at university.

He returned to fiction writing after obtaining his doctorate, self-publishing his first novel, Walls, in 2002. He has written five novels and novellas, including Distant Warriors (Hussein Publishing House 2005), In the Same Boat (Bay Owl Press 2010), Tracks (self-published 2015), and Asylum (Palaver 2015), all of which deal with issues of migration and displacement.

As a scholar specializing in South Asian military history, Wickremesekera has written two monographs that focus on India and Sri Lanka: Best Black Troops in the World: British Perceptions and the Making of the Sepoy, 1746–1805 (Manohar 2002) and Kandy at War: Indigenous Military Resistance to European Expansion in Sri Lanka, 1594–1818 (Vijitha Yapa Publications 2004). A third book on the separatist war in Sri Lanka will be published in late 2015.

He lives in Melbourne.