ko ko thett

ko ko thett is a poet, literary translator and editor who works between his mother tongue, Burmese, and English. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Iowa, and a BA in International Development from the University of Vienna (Austria). 

His current project is Hagiography, an annotated creative translation of the biographies of some of the best-loved Burmese zat performers who thrived in British Burma in the first half of the twentieth century. The word zat derives from jataka, a collection of ancient Buddhist stories, the main source of the zat repertoire. A zat pwe is an all-night theater, associated with pagoda festivals, featuring music, song, dance, drama and comedy. ko ko thett is interested in the carnivalesque, a translation approach that dismantles the hierarchy between author and translator and demands “profanation” of the source text with humor and chaos. 

ko ko thett has published and edited several poetry collections, anthologies, and translations in both Burmese and English, and participated in literary festivals across Asia, Europe, and North America. His work has been recognized with an English PEN Translates Award and an honorary Fellowship in Writing at the University of Iowa. He served as the country editor for Myanmar at Poetry International (2012–2020) and as the poetry editor for the Mekong Review (2017–2022). His MFA studies were made possible with a Provost’s Office Fellowship, a Graduate Fellowship, and a Stanley Award for International Research, as well as a post-graduate summer scholarship at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His collection of poems, Bamboophobia, was shortlisted for the 2022 Walcott Poetry Prize.