Welcome, this is Kyaw Hsan Hlaing! 

Born and raised in a small, remote village in Mrauk-U township, I read Burma/Arakan history, politics, stories, and poems through a comparative perspective.

I went to a public high school about five miles from my village, where I lived in a charity monastery that took in students like me. At eighteen, I went to work in China as an undocumented worker, my first time so far from home.

I left home when I was twenty, and I haven’t had the chance to go back since. Most of what I write is about my home state: the people I grew up with, the changes they have lived through, and the everyday moments that rarely make the news. Yet I often feel trapped behind my own silence.  

Some of these stories appeared in newspapers and magazines, and I've gathered many of them in this collection, Dispatches from Arakan.

These days, I also study and teach politics, still trying to understand the changes I write about. Outside of work, I enjoy reading novels, cooking, hiking with a camera, or playing football and tennis.

Please get in touch with kh827@cornell.edu