A poet, fiction writer and translator, Srilata is Associate Professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. Her books include a novel Table for Four (long listed for the Man Asian literary prize and published by Penguin in 2011, two collections of poems titled Arriving Shortly (Writers Workshop, 2011) and Seablue Child (Brown Critique, 2000), The Other Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self-Respect History (Zubaan, 2003), Short Fiction from South India (OUP, 2007) and Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (Penguin/Viking, 2009).
Srilata was a Charles Wallace Writer-in-residence at the University of Stirling, Scotland as well as a Sangam house writer-in-residence.