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Zlata Filipovic

Zlata Filipovic was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1980. At the age of ten, she started keeping a diary, which, when the conflict began in former Yugoslavia, became a record of the war and survival in her city. Zlata's Diary was published first in France in 1993 and was an instant international best-seller. It has since been translated into thirty-six languages and is required reading in many schools around the world.

She holds a BA in Human Sciences from Oxford University and an Masters Philosophy in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin. She has spoken extensively at schools and universities around the world about her experiences and has worked on many occasions with different organisations such as the Anne Frank House, UN and UNICEF, also being a three-time member of UNESCO Jury for Children's and Young People's Literature Prize for Tolerance.

Her written work includes contributions to several books, radio programs and newspapers, including a forward for The Freedom Writers Diary (Doubleday, 1997) and the English translation of Milosevic: The People's Tyrant (I.B. Tauris, 2004), for which she has also written a foreword. More recently, she has written a contribution to the Prentice Hall Literature, The Penguin Edition: Grade 6 (Prentice Hall, 2007) and has co-edited Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries form WWI to Iraq.

She recently worked within the UN Children and Armed Conflict Division in New York under Olara Otunnu and collaborating with Amnesty International USA on developing Human Rights Education material around her most recent book Stolen Voices.

Zlata now serves on the Executive Committee of Amnesty International Ireland and is currently making documentary films. She also still uses her story to relative situations to other people and is still inspiring to me. I loved listening to her story and hearing about what she went to.