Sudharshana Coomarasamy has found writing an important outlet from the age of eleven or twelve. During the July 1983 racial riots in Sri Lanka, everything Coomarasamy's family owned was set ablaze, including all her poems. On leaving her country and seeking refuge elsewhere, for the first time she began to write in Tamil, her mother tongue. In 1988, she published a book of Tamil poems in Montreal. She is now working on a collection of English poems.