Ma Thida is a medical doctor, writer, human rights activist and former prisoner of conscience. She believes in freedom of expression and once a medical doctor loved doing surgery and revolution. She edited a Shwe Amyutay magazine, Info Digest journal, and also voluntered at a local free clinic. In 1993, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organizations, and distributing unlawful literature.”  She was released in 1999 due to declining health, increasing political pressure from efforts of organizations like Amnesty International and PEN International. She was awarded some international human rights awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, Norwegian Authors Union Freedom of Expression Prize and Disturbing the Peace; Courageous Writer at Risk Award. She was a International Writers Project Fellow at Brown University and a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, the inaugural elected president of PEN Myanmar from 2013 till 2016.  She served as a board member of PEN International from 2016 till she was elected as chair of Writer in Prison Committee in 2021. She was a research associate at Southeast Asia Studies council at Yale University for 2021-2022. She moved to Germany as a fellow of Martin Roth Initiative for 2022-2023, then currently is a fellow at Writer in Exile program of PEN Germany.