Mirko Gashi was an Albanian

Albanians

Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...

 writer of the 20th century. He was born in Kraljevo

Kraljevo

Kraljevo is a city and municipality in central Serbia, built beside the river Ibar, 7 km west of its confluence with the Western Morava. It is located in the midst of an upland valley, between the mountains of Kotlenik in the north, and Stolovi in the south.In 2011 the city has population of...

 in Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

, attended elementary school in Preshevo and secondary school in Gjilan.

He studied journalism at the University of Belgrade

University of Belgrade

The University of Belgrade is the oldest and largest university of Serbia.Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-based departments into a single university...

 and worked subsequently as a reporter for the newspaper Flaka e vëllazërimit (Flame of Brotherhood) in Skopje

Skopje

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...

, Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...

 and for Radio Prishtina, Kosovo

Kosovo

Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

.

He was much admired in the 1980s for his verse, which was compiled in particular in the collections: Gjarpëri i shtëpise, Prishtina 1980 (The House Snake); Arbor vitae, Prishtina 1988 (The Tree of Life); and Plagë uji, Prishtina 1990 (Water Wound). He also translated much Kosovar Albanian literature into Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

.

Suffering increasingly from depression in later years, Gashi turned to alcohol for salvation and died of it in July 1995.