Sri Lanka's novelist and activist Whatever the difficulties of being a woman writer may be, Ameena Hussein's creative urge and belief that change is more effective when it comes from within turned her into a writer and a publisher. She started writing in 1992 and published her first collection of short stories, Fifteen, in 1999, which was short-listed for the Graetien Award that year. Her second collection of short stories, Zillij, which came out in 2003 won the State Literary Prize. It deals with the ethnic conflict and the question of identity from the minority perspective. Her first novel 'The Moon in the Water' is due soon. In 2003, Ameena co-founded the Perera Hussein Publishing House. She has been the editor of Nethra since 2004. Ameena is involved in many activities of human rights organisations as well as consultancies for British Council. She wrote 'Sometime there is no Blood', the groundbreaking research on violence against women in rural areas of Sri Lanka. Dynamic and soft-spoken Ameena born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in an upper-class family, her Oxford-educated westernised, lawyer father, she gained her higher studies in sociology with emphasis on Ethnicity and Gender from universities in California.