Martha Kuwee Kumsa is an Oromo born and raised in Ethiopia. She worked as a journalist in the second half of the 1970s, producing and broadcasting Oromo radio programs and editing the women’s column for the Oromo weekly, Bariisa. She was jailed and tortured by the military regime in January 1980, and she stayed incarcerated without charge or trial for ten years. Amnesty International and PEN International launched a successful campaign on her behalf and she was released in 1989. She came to Canada in 1991 under the Canadian Government’s Women at Risk Program. She has participated in various PEN projects, including The Taxi Project, along with Emma Beltran, Goran Simic, and Sheng Xue.