Amelia Batistich

Amelia Batistich
QSM
Born Amelia Barbarich
(1915-03-11)11 March 1915
Dargaville, New Zealand
Died 21 August 2004(2004-08-21) (aged 89)
New Zealand
Occupation Fiction writer

Amelia Batistich QSM (née Barbarich, 11 March 1915 – 21 August 2004) was a New Zealand fiction writer of Croatian descent.

Life

Batistich was born in Dargaville to John Barbarich and Milka Matutinovich, settlers from Dalmatia.[1][2] Her parents ran a boarding house which attracted new migrants, including labourers heading for Northland's gumfields for work. She was educated at an Irish Catholic convent.[3]

The family moved to Auckland when Batistich was 11.[2] Her father worked at a quarry there with Dalmatian stonemasons, and she was thus again surrounded by Dalmatian people.[1]

In the 1940s, aged about 44, she began to write poems and stories about her family and community, and the hardships faced by early settlers.[2] These were initially published in The Listener magazine and the School Journal, a magazine for New Zealand school children.[2] She also wrote about other ethnic minorities in New Zealand, such as Chinese in the Otago Gold Rush.[1]

In 1981, Batistich's novel Pjevaj Vilo u Planini won first prize in an international competition in the former Yugolsavia for migrant writers, and she was invited to visit Croatia by the Croatian Writers' Guild.[1][2]

Batistich was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for community service in the 1997 Queen's Birthday Honours.[4] She has been credited with leading the way for other ethnic groups, such as Māori, to also express their outlook on the community they were living in.[5]

Publications

Collections of short stories

Novels

Memoirs

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Robinson, Roger (ed.) (1998). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Auckland: Oxford University Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 0 19 558348 5.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Obituary: Amelia Batistich". New Zealand Herald. 20 August 2004. ISSN 1170-0777. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  3. "Interview with Amelia Batistich". my.christchurchcitylibraries.com. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  4. "Queen's Birthday Honours List 1997". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 2 June 1997. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
  5. Migrant Women's Writing in New Zealand: Amelia Batistich's Three-Dimensional World, Nina Nola, Questia, Retrieved 30 April 2016
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/16/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.