Zvane Črnja

Zvane (Ivan) Črnja (October 8, 1920 – February 26, 1991) was a prominent Croatian poet, prose writer, essayist, culturologist, screenwriter, playwright and filmologist, journalist, publicist, polemicist and publisher.

He's considered one of the most important names that Istria gave to Croatia in the 20th century.

His aliases include: Osip Suri, Barba Zvane, and Filus.

Born in the village of Črnjeni, he attended and finished Italian primary school in Žminj.

Fleeing fascism, in 1931 he crossed the then Yugoslav-Italian border on the Rječina with his family.

He continued his education in Sušak, first at the secondary civic academy and then at the trade academy.

His first poetic and prose works appeared in 1938 in Zagreb's Istra and Sušak's Primorje.

He was active in the anti-fascist movement of Istrian emigrants.

At the beginning of June 1938, he founded the Istrian revolutionary organization Mlada Istra in Zagreb and edited its illegal newspaper Sloboda.

In 1940 he enrolled at the College of Economics and Commerce in Zagreb.

He participated in the People's Liberation Movement between 1941 and 1945.

During the war in Istria and Gorski Kotar he edited Goranski vjesnik and Hrvatski list, and after his release he was the editor-in-chief of Glas Istre, Ilustrirani vjesnik and Vjesnik, and the editor of Epoha (Croatia), Domet and Most.

In 1948 he wound up in the Goli otok prison camp.

From there he was released after a few months; he later managed to restore his social reputation, and it was said that he was sent to Goli Otok only as a remand, and that this was a way to "pardon" him from the socially extremely unpleasant association with the so-called informbiro period.

He studied and graduated in law at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb (1950-1954).

In 1969, Zvane Črnja founded the renowned cultural organization Čakavski sabor in Žminj, whose secretary he was until 1977.

He is a signatory of the Declaration of the Čakavian Parliament against the regional declaration on the 1971 census, published on January 30, 1971.

In 1979 he started a representative publishing project of anthological-encyclopedic editions Istria through the centuries, signing 60 books in 10 rounds as editor-in-chief.

As an author and polyhistor of strong and distinctive inspiration, he wrote cultural-historical and literary essays and studies, poetry and memoir prose, deeply inspired by Istria, its Chakavian idiom and Croatian cultural and political history.

He died in Zagreb in 1991.

Boris Biletić published an extensive monographic study on the literary work of Zvane Črnja entitled Bartuljska jabuka in 2001.

Biletić also contributed to a scientific conference held in Pula in 2004 with a work on Črnja.

The Zvane Črnja Award, an award for the best book of essays published in Croatia, is named in his honor since 2007.