Ma Thida is a Burmese surgeon, writer, human rights activist and former political prisoner. In Myanmar, Ma Thida is best known as a leading intellectual who addresses the country's political situation in her books. She was recently elected chair of PEN International's Writer in Prison Committee. She has served as president of PEN Myanmar and as a board member of PEN International. At Yale University, she was a research associate in the Southeast Asian Studies Program. She currently resides in Berlin as a guest author of the Freundeskreis Schloss Wiepersdorf e.V. in cooperation with the Berliner Literarische Aktion.