Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, Ma Thida

Ma Thida is an award-winning dissident writer and human rights activist from Myanmar. She spent six years in prison in the 1990s, which she wrote about in her acclaimed memoir, Prisoner of Conscience: My Steps through Insein. In the book she details her use of vipassana meditation to get her through the untold hardships of jail. 
 
Ma Thida has published more than a dozen books as well as short stories and she has worked as an editor and a surgeon. She was awarded the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award and the Reebok Human Rights Award and is currently the chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. 

If you’re in Western Australia, don’t miss these two forthcoming PEN events with Ma Thida:

• Thursday 13 June: Ma Thida in conversation with Victoria Laurie

• Saturday 15 June: A Conversation with Ma Thida: Myanmar and the Road to Freedom