Award-Winning Author Sonali Deraniyagala to Deliver Hartwick’s 2026 Babcock Lecture

ONEONTA, NY Economist and memoirist Sonali Deraniyagala will deliver Hartwick College’s 2026 Babcock Lecture, “Wave: Life and Memories After the Tsunami,” on Thursday, Oct. 8, at 7 p.m. at the SUNY Oneonta Welcome Center. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Deraniyagala is a faculty member in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and a visiting professor and resident scholar at Columbia University in New York. Her academic work focuses on the macroeconomics of poverty and inequality and the political economy of climate shocks. Her most recent publication, “Disasters and Development,” co-authored with John Mutter, was published by Columbia University Press in 2025.

Deraniyagala is also the author of “Wave,” her memoir about losing her husband, two sons and parents in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami while the family was vacationing in Sri Lanka. Deraniyagala was the sole survivor of the disaster, and the memoir chronicles her experience of loss, grief, memory and recovery. “Wave,” published by Knopf/Vintage in 2013, became a global bestseller and received the PEN/Ackerley Prize. It also was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2013 and one of its 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years.

Copies of “Wave” will be available for purchase and signing following the lecture.

The Babcock Lecture is co-presented by Susan Navarette, the Cora A. Babcock Chair in English, and the Department of Literature, Media and Writing at Hartwick College and Sallie Han, Director of the Center for Racial Justice and Inclusive Excellence and Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Oneonta.

This fall’s Babcock Lecture is presented in collaboration with SUNY Oneonta. For more information, contact Navarette, at navarettes@hartwick.edu or 607-431-4643.