Zofka Kveder

Who was Zofka Kveder?

Zofka Kveder was a writer, playwright, translator and journalist who wrote in Slovene and later in life also in Croatian. She is considered one of the first Slovene women writers and feminists

Kveder was born in Ljubljana and spent most of her childhood in rural Lower Carniola before she was sent to a convent school in Ljubljana. In 1897 she found to work in Ljubljana. In 1899 she first moved to Trieste and then to Bern where she enrolled in the university, but was unable to support herself financially and headed for Munich and then Prague. There she met her future husband Vladimir Jelovšek, a Croatian medical student with whom she moved to Zagreb in 1906. She later remarried to the Croatian politician Juraj Demetrović. In Prague she published her first book od short stories Misterij žene.

In Slovene literature her encouragement of young writers at the time such as Prežihov Voranc and France Bevk in her role as the editor of the Prague published journal Domači prijatelj is also acknowledged. She also translated some of Janko Kersnik and Ivan Cankar's work into German as well as Czech and Croatian plays into Slovene.