Visar Zhiti is a poet and writer who has published numerous volumes of literature, among them two books about his time in Spaç, a notorious work camp in northern Albania, and in the camp at Qafë Bar, also in the north. In 1979, his first collection of poems in manuscript form were denounced as anti-communist by an expert panel of other writers. Subsequently, he was tried and found guilty of agitating against the government and was sentenced to 13 years in prison of which he served seven. In 2013, Zhiti became Minister of Culture, a move that would have been unfathomable under communism. His memoirs and poetry have been published internationally.

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