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Theme: Burma

Editorial

Voices from Burma

It is easy to forget that Burma, or Myanmar as it is now called, is a huge country. It is smaller than Turkey but bigger...

Text: Ola Larsmo March 13 2014
Poetry

Wash your hands

The pseudonym Pandora is one the most influential poets in Burma today. In 2012, she published an anthology entitled Tuning: An Anthology of Myanmar Women Poets, which is the first book of its kind...

Text: Pandora March 13 2014
Article

What does PEN Myanmar mean for the country?

PEN was once a kind of social club for authors. The task is currently to found a PEN centre in Myanmar that can map the country's literature and its degree of freedom of expression, which plays a...

Text: Marian Botsford Fraser March 13 2014
Article

The Kachin: Culture of the mountain lords

One of the problems shaking the state of Myanmar can be found in the ethnic conflicts that have arisen in the wake of the faltering dictatorship. While the majority of the population speaks Burmese...

Text: Lucas Stewart March 13 2014
Fiction

Ludu and I

1946 saw the establishment of a regime-critical daily newspaper called Ludu. Today, it is a natural institution for dissident writers in Burma. Despite the constant pressure and threats it received...

Text: Bo Bo Lansin March 13 2014
Article

On the precipice: Burmese literature post-censorship

How does a country's literature recover after years of mass censorship? James Byrne, poet and founder of the poetry journal The Wolf, has followed the developments in Burma for many years and he was...

Text: James Byrne March 13 2014
Article

Two steps forward—two steps back?

Following the student protests in Burma in 1988, an independent magazine called The Irrawaddy was founded in exile in Thailand, and quickly became a respected source for news from the closed country...

Text: Aung Zaw March 13 2014
Fiction

Prison memoirs

Ma Thida is a Burmese human rights activist, author and currently chair of PEN Myanmar. In October 1993, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for constituting “a danger to public order, and having...

Text: Ma Thida March 13 2014

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