Ma Thida is an author, doctor, and activist who received the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award in 1996 while serving her sentence in Insein Prison on charges of “endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations, and distributing unlawful literature.” In 2016, she was honored with the Disturbing the Peace Award from the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation in New York for her commitment to promoting free speech.

In the mid-eighties, she began writing short stories, and became involved in several democratization projects, editing newsletters and pamphlets for the National League for Democracy (NLD) party. As a young doctor, she also served as a medical volunteer for family members of political prisoners. She published her first novel, The Sunflower, in 1992, which was swiftly banned. In 1993, she was sentenced to twenty years in prison for supporting the pro-democracy movement and the party of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. After serving six years, she was released due to declining health and increasing international pressure.

Since her release she has continued to write. Her novel The Roadmap came out in 2011 under the pen name Suragamika, meaning “brave traveler;” her memoir Prisoner of Conscience: My Steps Through Insein was published in 2016. Although she spent time abroad participating in medical training programs, international writers’ projects, and conferences dealing with freedom of speech, she chooses to reside in Myanmar in the hopes of improving her country. She currently edits Info Digest journal and Shwe Amyutay literary magazine, and has published Teen magazine since 2002.