1. Gjergj Fishta is regarded as one of the most influential Albanian writers of the 20th century, particularly for his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcis, and as the editor of two of the most authoritative magazines after Albania's independence, Posta e Shqypnies and Hylli i Drites.
Gjergj Fishta was born in 1871 as Zef Ndoka to a Catholic Albanian family in Fishte, which is a village located in the Zadrima region.
Gjergj Fishta's parents were Ndok and Prenda Kaci, and he was the youngest of three brothers and one sister.
Gjergj Fishta returned to Shkoder and began work as a parish priest in the village of Gomsiqe and as a teacher in the college of Troshan.
In 1899, alongside well-known Albanian activists Preng Doci and Ndre Mjeda, Gjergj Fishta founded the cultural association Shoqnia e Bashkimit te Gjuhes Shqipe in Shkoder, otherwise known as Bashkimi or Shoqnia Bashkimi.
In 1907, Gjergj Fishta founded the first Albanian public library in the city of Shkoder, alongside fellow Albanian activist Shtjefen Gjecovi.
Gjergj Fishta was elected as the chairman of the committee, and although he praised the development of the Bashkimi alphabet, he declared that he had not arrived to defend any one of the alphabets; rather, he had come to unite with his countrymen and adopt the alphabet which the committee decided would be the most useful.
In 1921, Gjergj Fishta was elected to the Albanian parliament as a representative of Shkoder, and in August of that year was made vice president of the assembly.
Gjergj Fishta attended numerous Balkan conferences, such as in Athens in 1930, in Sofia in 1931, and in Bucharest in 1932.
Gjergj Fishta spent the later years of his life in seclusion at the Franciscan monastery of Gjuhadol in Shkoder.
Gjergj Fishta authored 37 literary publications during his lifetime, and he was particularly notable for his work as a lyric and satirical poet.
The literature of Shkodra produced by Catholic Albanian clergymen entered a golden age during the first decades of the 20th century, and this blossoming of Gheg Culture is largely credited to Gjergj Fishta, who was universally recognised as Albania's national poet at the outbreak of World War II.
Gjergj Fishta translated a number of literary works into Albanian, such as the Iliad.
Robert Elsie hypothesized that Gjergj Fishta substituted the struggle against the Ottomans with a struggle against the Slavs, after the recent massacres and expulsions of Albanians by their Slavic neighbours.
Gjergj Fishta was perhaps denigrated more than any other pre-Communist writer, but this was not the result of the alleged pro-Italian or clerical sympathies.
Rather, Gjergj Fishta's censorship was the result of the pro-Slavic sympathies of the Albanian communists that were rooted in Yugoslavian involvement in their actual establishment, and his works were wrongfully labelled as "anti-Slavic propaganda".
Gjergj Fishta's censorship persisted until the fall of communism in the early 1990s.
Gjergj Fishta was awarded with the Order of Franz Joseph from Austro-Hungarian Empire authorities, later on in 1925 with the Medaglia di Benemerenza by the Holy See.