Musine Kokalari

Musine Kokalari was born on February 10, 1917, in Adana, Turkey, into an intellectual family from Gjirokastër. Studying literature at Sapienza University of Rome, she wrote her doctoral dissertation on Naim Frashëri and published her breakthrough debut collection Siç me thotë nënua plakë (As My Old Mother Tells Me) in 1939, becoming the first female writer in Albanian literature.

In 1943, Kokalari co-founded the non-violent Social Democratic Party and the newspaper Zëri i lirisë (The Voice of Freedom). Arrested in 1946 by Enver Hoxha's secret police, she refused to plead guilty at her trial, bravely proclaiming: 'I am a democrat; I want free elections and freedom of thought!' She endured sixteen years in Burrel prison and twenty-one years of hard labor in Rrëshen, dying of cancer denied hospital care.