about

I’m never really sure what to put in a section like this because I don’t know what you, dear reader, would want to know. Do you want to know about me, the writer, or about this place, this website and its words, or maybe some third thing I haven’t thought of? How much of myself, my history, my plans, my inner thoughts and philosophies should I leave for you here?

The form of the about page is a curious one. There are the about pages of a corporate internet, informational mission statements and marketing that try to sell you on some product or vision. Then there are also the about pages of a more social internet, little blurbs found in the bios of social media accounts. There are LinkedIn profiles, Spotify artist descriptions, the online version of the biographies in book jackets for Twitch streamers, OnlyFans models, TikTok influencers, and all the ways people answer these simple questions: What is this? Who am I?

So here is my attempt, as of September 2025. As things change, more and different versions with different tangents in answering those questions may come in the future.

My name is Han Maw Aung, but I usually go by Harry.

Tangent about my names here.

Some people adopt an English name as a matter of status, to be closer and more palateable to Western society. Others may reclaim their native name later as a matter of pride and heritage, shaking off the conformity imposed on them in the past.

But I am neither the former nor fully the latter, because I have always gone by both. I am proud of where I come from and my given, native name, and it’s the name I intend to go by as a writer – it would feel wrong to get published as Harry Aung. But that same name, Han Maw, is also currently reserved for very few people in my life, family and truly old friends from back home.

There’s a familiarity there that is not just closeness but also a shared understanding of living and growing up in Myanmar and community that is engrained in that name to me that it feels weird and wrong when those without that shared understanding refer to me as such. It’s often just an innocent and harmless mistake my American friends make, but sometimes some people insist even after I correct them. It feels like they take my name – or worse, butcher it to just Han – as token proof of their wokeness or something that feels oddly close to exotic fetishization.

It’s odd to have a name feel both personal and private but also be the vehicle by which I express and display my cultural pride and heritage and family to the world.

As for my other name, it wasn’t given to me by my parents but instead offered by my uncle. He offered me Harry and my brother Simon. While my brother didn’t take the name, I did. I liked it, chose it, and grew up with and into it. I spent time and experienced important moments in my life being known by it. In some ways, the people who only know me as Han Maw don’t fully know who I am because so many cherished and essential parts of my self, I identify with my name Harry.

I know Western names can be a source of shame, a tool of cultural erasure either imposed or self-inflicted, but it never felt like that to me. If anything it unlocked the parts of me that would’ve been difficult to access without it, parts that feel genuine and real and true but also distinctly different from what my given name evokes for me.

There’s a place and purpose for both my names, as missing one or the other feels like missing whole parts of me. If anything it is a small act of resistance to instead insist on the nuances of my names and identity instead of making it an easier story to digest, to insist on the wholeness of the modern emigrant experience.

So if you’ve known me as Han Maw, please continue to do so. And if you know me as Harry, I would love for you to stick with that. If you somehow don’t know me as either, first – Wow, welcome, that’s kind of cool that I have a reader that I don’t know personally – and second – you can think of me as Han Maw Aung the writer for now but if we ever meet I’ll probably introduce myself as Harry.

Maybe I’ll let more people call me Han Maw once or if I get published. It’s part of the weird lines of identity and representation and familiarity I’ll have to figure out.

Now that that tangent is out of the way, back to the about section.

I’m a former software engineer that studied computer science and math in college with a liberal arts detour in education and art, and an aspiring writer.

I’m currently living in Seattle, WA, working on a novel and this website is a side project where I experiment and try new things with my writing in the hopes of growing as a writer and developing my craft and my voice. It helps me both get comfortable having people read what I write but also have something to direct interested parties to while the novel is in progress.

For now it’s mostly creative nonfiction based on my experiences but essays or fiction may be coming soon – my recent posts have definitely trended some shade or another of introspective sad and I’m working on expanding the catalogue and getting practice writing about the other ways in which I and maybe we experience and live a human life. I hope my writing does for you what all great writing has done for me: make you feel joy, feel inspiration, feel connection, feel human, and maybe feel a little less alone.

Please note that the writing may or may not be fully accurate or true to life as this is not a biography, a journal, or a memoir. My priority is in service of whatever writing goal I had, whether it is the portrayal of a feeling or playing with certain imagery. For how personal and vulnerable some of the topics I write about can be, I still want to leave and demonstrate some distance between my writing and who I am outside of it.

All that to say, welcome, and thank you for being here and your support.