Min Thu Wun

Maung Wun, writing under the beloved pen name Min Thu Wun, was born on February 10, 1909, in Kungyangon. Graduating from Rangoon University and Oxford University (B.Litt.), he and classmate Zawgyi pioneered the Khitsan movement in the 1930s, sweeping away rigid archaisms in favor of concise, crystalline Burmese verse.

His poems celebrating rural flowers, rains, and childhood games became beloved national classics taught in schools across Myanmar. A respected Mon-Burmese lexicographer, he authored definitive Mon-Burmese dictionaries. In 1990, he was elected to parliament as a candidate for the National League for Democracy (NLD). He lived to age ninety-five, revered as a national literary patriarch.