Amelia Batistich
| Amelia Batistich QSM | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Amelia Barbarich 11 March 1915 Dargaville, New Zealand |
| Died |
21 August 2004 (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 Yugoslavia 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
- An Olive Tree in Dalmatia 1963; reprinted 1980
- Holy Terrors and Other Stories 1991
Novels
- Another Mountain, Another Song 1981
- Pjevaj Vilo u Planini 1981, in Serbo-Croatian; translated into English as Sing Vila in the Mountains 1987
- Never Lost for Words 2001
Memoirs
- My Story 2003
References
- 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.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Obituary: Amelia Batistich". New Zealand Herald. 20 August 2004. ISSN 1170-0777. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
- ↑ "Interview with Amelia Batistich". my.christchurchcitylibraries.com. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
- ↑ "Queen's Birthday Honours List 1997". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 2 June 1997. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
- ↑ Migrant Women's Writing in New Zealand: Amelia Batistich's Three-Dimensional World, Nina Nola, Questia, Retrieved 30 April 2016