THIDA MA

IWP2005_ma_thida
2005 Resident

MA THIDA (fiction writer, physician, activist; b. 1966, Burma) was in medical school when Burma’s military junta shut down the universities. She then served as a health care provider as well as an editor for the non-violent National League for Democracy. Her many short stories containing disguised criticism of the Burmese government led to six years in solitary confinement, without access to reading or writing materials. In 1999 she was pardoned and released on humanitarian grounds. She is now the editor of a youth magazine as well as a surgeon at the Muslim Free Hospital, which treats poor patients at no cost.

Writing sample: 
application/pdf iconIWP2005_MaThida.pdf

Happening Now... (more)

  • Nigerian playwright, novelist, and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka gave a public lecture on November 6 as part of the closing festivities of the 2011 IWP residency.

  • The newest release from 91st Meridian Books: How to Write an Earthquake, a trilingual French-Creole-English e-anthology of poetry and prose responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

  • The IWP's 2010 Annual Report is available for viewing (PDF / SWF).

  • The Norwegian Writers' Association has awarded its 2011 free expression award to Ma Thida (IWP 2005). She is its first-ever recipient from Burma.

  • In the first issue of the independent, English-language Iraq Literary Review, edited by Baghdad-based critics Soheil Najm (IWP 2009) and Sadek. R. Mohamed: 100+ pages of criticism, poetry, fiction, translations…