His poetic career was discreetly launched with the publication of a samizdat poetry chapbook at Yangon Institute of Technology in 1994. After he left the country in 1997, Thett began writing in English. He has won a PEN translation award for the seminal anthology Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets, which he co-edited with James Byrne. His collection of poems The Burden of Being Burmese (Zephyr, 2015) is listed on World Literature Today’s “Nota Benes”. After a whirlwind tour of Asia, Europe and North America for about 20 years—Thett happily resettled in Sagaing in central Myanmar in 2017. He is an Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa, and country editor for Myanmar at Poetry International in the Netherlands. He writes in both Burmese and English.