Her previous books received widespread media attention, with features and interviews in People, Time, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the Verge, the Cut, New York, Corriere della Serra (Italy), Die Zeit (Germany), and the Globe and Mail (Canada). She has been a guest on CNN, MSNBC, Good Morning America, Fox News, Good Day New York, NewsNation, Al Jazeera, NPR, The Tamron Hall Show, Design Matters with Debbie Millman (TED), Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris (ABC), Modern Ruhles with Stephanie Ruhles (NBC), WNYC, KCRW, Sirius XM, Talk Radio Europe, WNET, and CBS Radio News.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, Cosmo, NBC News, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. 

In 2025, she delivered the TEDx Talk “Truth Is Power: Rewriting the Narrative on Domestic Violence” in Berlin. A frequent public speaker represented by CAA, she has appeared at global conferences including the Skoll World Forum, Aspen Ideas Festival, the Clinton Global Initiative, and numerous UN and WHO events. She facilitates workshops on storytelling as a pathway to transformation and social change for educational institutions as well as governmental and non-governmental organizations.  

As a producer and director, Selvaratnam has collaborated with major artists and organizations such as Carrie Mae Weems, Mickalene Thomas, Catherine Gund, Sarah Lewis, the Ms. Foundation, Sundance Film Festival, and Condé Nast. Her credits include critically acclaimed films such as Born to Fly (Emmy nomination) about daredevil choreographer Elizabeth Streb, AGGIE about collector and philanthropist Agnes Gund and her founding of the Art for Justice Fund to fight mass incarceration, and Love to the Max (Emmy nomination, GLAAD Media Award nomination) about the targeting of trans kids through the experience of the Briggle family in Texas. In addition, her films have played on HBO, PBS, Showtime, Starz, IFC, Refinery29, Vice, and the Sundance Channel; and have premiered at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, Aspen Shortsfest, and SXSW. Selvaratnam has worked on live events at the Guggenheim Museum, the Hammer Museum, Kennedy Center, The Kitchen, MOCA Los Angeles, Park Avenue Armory, Performance Space New York, and Rubell Family Collection

As a performer, Selvaratnam has toured to dozens of cities with companies including The Wooster Group and The Builders Association; and been a guest actor at New Dramatists, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Voice & Vision Theater, and the Institute on Arts and Civic Dialogue. She has played on stages at prestigious venues around the world, such as New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music, Skirball Center, and Lincoln Center; London’s Barbican Theatre, Paris’s Theatre de la Bastille, and Singapore’s Victoria Theatre.

She has served on the boards of the Third Wave Fund, For Freedoms, BoomArts, The Wooster Group, Groundswell Community Mural Project, and Let It Ripple. Most recently, she has been an Advisor to Open Future Lab, Pop Culture Collaborative, The DO World, and Sunrise Collective (@ Sundance Film Festival).

Selvaratnam’s career began with her work assisting Anna Deavere Smith on the development of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 about the human toll of the L.A. riots, and with her position as a youth organizer on the steering committee of the NGO Forum/Fourth World Conference on Women in China in 1995. She then was the Special Projects Coordinator at the Ms. Foundation for Women until 1998. In addition, she was an organizer and researcher for the World Health Organization’s Kobe Conference on Women and Tobacco in 1999.  

Born in Sri Lanka and raised in California, she holds degrees in Chinese language and legal history from Harvard University. She lives between New York City and Portland, Oregon.