About the Author

Khaing Mar Kyaw Zaw (Burma), poet, journalist, and teacher, is an ethnic Karen, one of Burma's largest minority populations.

The Karen have been in opposition to the Burmese government from almost from the first day that Burma won independence from Great Britain. Khaing Mar's father was a member of the Karen National Union (KNU), the Karen resistance organization.

When Khaing Mar was eleven months old, she went to live with an aunt and did not see her mother, brothers and sisters for the next twenty years, by which time her father had been killed. In 1992, Khaing Mar joined with the Karen opposition movement.

First she taught school and joined the KNU general secretary's office. Now she works for the Karen Women's Organization and is the Burmese language editor for the Karen Information Center, writing news and feature articles.