Raised and educated on Tasmania's north-west coast, Iris Milutinovic spent a period of time in both Victoria and New South Wales before eventually settling in Western Australia in 1948. She lived for many years in Albany where she worked in a number of clerical jobs and during the 1950s wrote scripts and recorded talks for radio broadcasts by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). By the late 1970s Milutinovic had moved back to Tasmania where she took up residence in 'a little old cottage on the banks of the Mersey River in East Devonport'.
Although Milutinovic had 'always loved writing', the demands of marriage and family determined that 'she did not start publishing until she was over sixty'. Despite this delayed beginning to her literary career, Milutinovic established a reputation as a writer of short fiction and in 1978 she won the Jessie Litchfield Award for Literature. A further tribute to her accomplishment has been reflected by FAW Tasmania which conducts the Iris Milutinovic Short Story Competition, held biannually in even-numbered years.
Milutinovic published a fictionalised autobiography, Talk English Carn't Ya (1978), which was inspired by the twenty-seven years she spent married to her second husband, a Yugoslav who migrated from Serbia. Her short fiction has been published in the selected work, I'm Still Here Aren't I? : Short Stories (1985), and also appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
She was a co-founder of the Albany branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, as well as a member of the Australian Society of Authors, and the Business and Professional Women's Club of Albany.
(Source: (Dustjacket) Milutinovic, Talk English Carn't Ya, 1978)
