Khet Mar (Myanmar, 1969) is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist. As a twenty-two-year-old university student, she was arrested for her political activism, tortured, and sentenced to ten years in prison.
She was released after a year, then came under scrutiny in 2008 for defying the government by performing aid work and drawing attention to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. She left Burma in 2009 to become a writer in residence at the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh. She was a featured writer at the 2009 PEN World Voices Festival and participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 2007; the Writers in Motion program, sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State, in 2011; and the International Writers’ Workshop at Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong in 2014. She has published the novel Wild Snowy Night, four collections of short stories, three volumes of essays, and a Burmese translation of I Am Malala. Her novella Night Birds (2014) and collection of short stories and essays The Souls of Fallen Flowers (2012) were published in the US, and her writing has been translated into Japanese, Spanish and English. She lives in Maryland and works as a broadcast journalist at the Radio Free Asia Burmese Service in Washington, DC. Her writings have shed light on the tension and complexities of Myanmar’s contemporary society, and her radio programs focus on issues such as youth, children, women, education, and environment.
