Jolanda Kodra

Jolanda Kodra (1910 - 1963) was an Albanian writer and translator, one of the first woman writers in Albanian language, as well as a translator into Italian language of the works of Albanian writers, such as Ndre Mjeda, Migjeni, Petro Marko, and Sterjo Spasse.

Jolanda was née an Italian, Iolanda Guazzoni, in 1910, in Rome, Italy, and was niece of Enrico Guazzoni, an Italian screenwriter and film director. She was pursuing studies in a classical lyceum, when she met with Malo Kodra, originary from Gjirokastër, who was a student in Rome. A fitness teacher, he brought her to Albania in 1931. She soon learned Albanian and started not only to communicate well, but also to publish poetry in Albanian as well as and literary criticism articles in well known magazines Hylli i Dritës, Përpjekja shqiptare, Fryma, Njeriu and Tomori on Naim Frashëri, Gjergj Fishta, Migjeni, and Ndre Mjeda. Kodra worked particularly on Migjeni and Mjeda, which she later translated into Italian. She was one of the first women to publish in Albania, in the company of Selfixhe Ciu and Musine Kokalari.

After World War II she worked as a translator from and into Italian, as well as Russian, of, among other, writers such as Petro Marko and Sterjo Spasse. She was not allowed to neither teach by the communist regime nor to go back into her home country until 1962, one year before her death.

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