Vida Brest

Who is Vida Brest?

Vida Brest was a YugoslavSlovene language poet, writer, journalist and teacher, best known for her juvenile fiction, often based on her own experiences as a young woman partisan during the Second World War.

Brest was born in Šentrupert in Lower Carniola in 1925. At the age of 17 she joined the resistance movement and after the end of the Second World War became a journalist and teacher. She later devoted herself to writing, her main inspiration being her own experiences during the war, but also wrote fairy tales and children's stories. From a very early age she also wrote poetry, with her first poems being published by the partisan press during the war. A selection of her best poems was published posthumously in 1995, selected and edited by Ivan Minatti.

She won the Levstik Award in 1984 for her book of stories from the resistance entitled Majhen človek na veliki poti.