Ma Thida

Ma Thida (; born 2 September 1966 is a Burmese surgeon, writer, human rights activist and former prisoner of conscience. She has published under the pseudonym Suragamika which means "brave traveler". In Myanmar, Thida is best known as a leading intellectual, whose books deal with the country's political situation. In fact, she was actively supporting Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and founder of the main opposition party in Burma. She served nearly six years in unhealthy, mostly solitary conditions. She contracted tuberculosis without adequate access to medical care. In 1996 she received the award of year's PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write while she was still in prison. From 2008 to 2010, she lived in the US as an International Writers Project Fellow at Brown University and a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.

In 2016, the English translation of her prison memoir Sanchaung, Insein, Harvard was published as Prisoner of Conscience: My Steps through Insein.

She was honored with the 2016 'Disturbing the Peace' award given by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, for her humanitarian values and for having suffered unjust persecution for her beliefs. In 2016, she was elected to the board of PEN International at 82nd PEN International Congress held in Galician, Spain. She was previously president of PEN Myanmar. She is the chair of the Writer in prison committee of PEN International.

She left Myanmar in 2021, soon after the military seized power in a coup.

Works The Sunflower (1999) In the Shade of an Indian Almond Tree (1999) Sweet and spicy honey mud (1999) Insight of colorful lights and beyond esthetic border (1999) One, Zero and Ten for Teens (2003) Message to Teen (2011) Translation of Japanese Women's Poems (2011) The Roadmap (2011) Sanchaung, Insein, Harvard (2012) A Letter for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (2013) The Imperishable Dictum (2014) Brown to Crimson (2014) What Is Independent Citizen's Spirit? (2014) Youths Who Dare To Live and Compete(2014) Nothing to Lose But Your Life (2015) From Selfishness to Leaving From Fear(2015) Prisoner of Conscience: My Steps through Insein (2016) Writing of Ma Thida (2016) A-Maze: Myanmar’s Struggle for Democracy, 2011-2023 (2024)