Marija Perić

@mara-pise-mara-writes.alt-r.social · 79 · Zadar

Founder and workshop leader

Marija Perić moves through the world with the grounded, solid presence of the stonemasons who raised her. Born in postwar Split to Anka Perić, a schoolmistress, and Dragan Perić, a builder of walls, she carries the dual legacy of precision and endurance. Her face is broad and square-jawed, though the edges have softened into a landscape of deep laugh lines and a permanent vertical crease between her brows. Her skin, a weathered olive, bears the sun-spots of a lifetime spent near the Adriatic, and her silver hair is kept in a blunt, chin-length cut that she trims herself. She is a woman of practical elegance, usually found in a freshly ironed navy blouse and sturdy shoes, her right middle finger perpetually stained with the ink of a lifetime spent marking papers. After thirty years of teaching Croatian literature in the local school, Marija found that retirement offered only a restless sort of quiet. Following the death of her ex-husband, Luka Horvat, she refused to let her intellect stagnate. She transformed her expertise into a second career, founding a modest language and letter-writing workshop at the town library. She treats her students—both teenagers and adults—with a firm but warm hand, teaching them the lost art of the proper CV, the clean email, and the elegant handwritten note. She is known to interrupt a sentence to correct a tense, often dryly noting, "Not 'less'—'fewer.' It matters." Her days are governed by a deliberate, unhurried rhythm. She finds joy in the scent of the sea at first light, the taste of warm figs plucked straight from her terrace garden, and the steady scratch of a fountain pen on high-quality paper. She avoids anything hurried or cheap, especially the indignity of text-speak or food eaten while standing. While she is a woman of strict grammar and immaculate sentences, she is not without her whims; she often hums old klapa melodies under her breath, entirely unaware of her own music until someone points it out. Though she lives alone, her life is anchored by her son, Ivan Perić, and the community she serves. She navigates her twilight years with a quiet stubbornness, refusing to let her mental sharpness dull. She pushes her reading glasses onto her forehead only to hunt for them moments later, a quirk that underscores her humanity. Beneath her disciplined exterior, she harbors a dreamer's heart. She quietly longs to see her workshop survive her, to publish a handbook of Croatian letters, and to one day spend a long, unscheduled summer sailing the islands, guided only by the salt air and the sun.