"[1][2] His debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist (2016) was released on January 12, 2016 by Lee Boudreaux Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.
The biracial son of a Sri Lankan father and a mother from Montana, Yapa grew up in central Pennsylvania and has traveled and lived in 48 US states and 35 countries, including Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, India, London, Montreal, and New York City.
[3][4] Yapa graduated from Penn State University in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economic Geography, for which he won the 2002 E.W.
[5] He received his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing/Fiction degree in 2010 from Hunter College in New York City, where he studied with Peter Carey, Nathan Englander, Claire Messud and Colum McCann.
[12][13] The story is about a Sri Lankan couple named Asoka (wife) and Sanjay (husband) adjusting to life in an unnamed rural United States town, which they newly arrived in, where Asoka later meets an American farmer that rescues her from a fall on Thanksgiving Day, which changes her perspective on life.
[3] "[The story] forces not only the Asian minority to reconcile his or her orientation to Anglo-dominant America, but also shows how dominant America has to reconcile its relationship to the Asian minority," Coffin said, continuing: "[i]n its final gorgeous pages, 'Pilgrims' opened a space for the discussion of what it means to be ethnic and American.
[22] Yapa's debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist (2016) was published on January 12, 2016 by Lee Boudreaux Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.
[23] Yapa also appeared on the Late Night with Seth Meyers show along with other guests Eva Longoria and Jason Mantzoukas on January 13, 2016 to promote the book.