Petar Bilušić (pronounced [pětar bǐluʃitɕ]; 25 June 1904 – 1994) was a Croatian poet and storyteller.[1] [2]
Petar Bilušić was born in Zaton (Šibenik) to father Dunko Bilušić Milošević and mother Jela née Bilušić. He finished 6 grades of elementary school in Zaton (1911 – 1917) and then worked as a laborer. He joined the workers' movement and was imprisoned in Lepoglava, Sremska Mitrovica, Niš and Šibenik. During 1941 he joined the war on the side of the partisans, but due to illness he was sent back to act from the background. He spent about 18 months in Italian camps (1942 – 1943). After trying to escape, he was taken to a concentration camp in Trieste and to a hospital in Piacenza. Upon his return to the homeland, he rejoined the war; he was the leader of a group of mobilized fishermen on the island of Žirje. After the liberation, he worked in Šibenik. Petar Bilušić died in 1994.
His first publicized work was the poem Ogledalo in the illegal newspaper Krug (Sremska Mitrovica Prison, 1934). He wrote poems, fairy tales and children's stories with lyrical and humorous, sometimes sentimental and didactic features, publishing them in the following publications: Ilustirani vjesnik (1952), Omladinski borac (1952), Zapisi s njiva (anthology, 1952), Jutro (1954), Koraci (1954), Novine mladih (1954, 1955), Osvit (1954), Slobodni dan (1954), Šibenska revija (1954), Narodni kalendar Sloga (1955), Polimlje (1955), Radost (1955), Mladi zadrugar (1958), Vesela sveska (1958), Književne novine (1967), and in some daily and weekly newspapers. His drama Kuća na rubu šume was staged in theaters in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo, and his play Crvene šoljice was staged in the Croatian National Theatre in Šibenik. Some of his children's poems have been translated into Italian.