Gjergj Fishta (pronounced [ɟɛɾɟ ˈfiʃta]; 23 October 1871 – 30 December 1940) was an Albanian Franciscan friar, poet, educator, rilindas, politician, translator and writer. He is regarded as one of the most influential Albanian writers of the 20th century, particularly for his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís, and as the editor of two of the most authoritative magazines after Albania's independence, Posta e Shqypniës and Hylli i Dritës.

Fishta was the chairman of the Congress of Manastir, which sanctioned the official Albanian alphabet, and he was part of the Albanian delegation to the Versailles Conference in 1919. In 1921, he was a member of the Albanian parliament and eventually became the deputy chairman. Later on, during the 1920s and the 1930s, he was among the most influential cultural and literary figures in Albania. After the Communist regime came to power, his literary oeuvre had been taken out of circulation until the fall of communism in the early 1990s. In recognition of his vast contributions to Albanian literature, he is also known as the "Albanian Homer".

Fishta was born in 1871 as Zef Ndoka to a Catholic Albanian family in Fishtë, which is a village located in the Zadrima region. His parents were Ndok and Prenda Kaçi, and he was the youngest of three brothers and one sister. The parish priest of Troshan - Marian Pizzochini of Palmanova - asked Gjergj's parents to make him a friar. At the expense of the parishioner, Zef went to the Franciscan school in Shkodër until 1880, which is when Troshan's College began its activity. After completing his initial education in the Franciscan colleges of Troshan and Shkodër in 1886, Fishta was sent by the Franciscan Order to Bosnia, where he came into close contact with classical Latin and modern West European literary traditions.

Fishta was ordained as a priest in 1894 and officially accepted into the Franciscan order under the name 'Gjergj Fishta'. He returned to Shkodër and began work as a parish priest in the village of Gomsiqe and as a teacher in the college of Troshan. In 1899, alongside well-known Albanian activists Preng Doçi and Ndre Mjeda, Fishta founded the cultural association Shoqnia e Bashkimit të Gjuhës Shqipe (Society for the Unity of the Albanian Language) in Shkodër, otherwise known as Bashkimi or Shoqnia Bashkimi. The association published Albanian-language books, notably a dictionary of the northern dialect of the Albanian language.

By 1902, Fishta became the director of every Franciscan school in northern Albania, and he replaced Italian with Albanian as the language of instruction. In 1907, Fishta founded the first Albanian public library in the city of Shkodër, alongside fellow Albanian activist Shtjefën Gjeçovi. As a representative of the Shoqnia Bashkimi, Fishta participated in the Congress of Manastir, which was held in the city of Manastir in 1908 with the intention of standardising the Albanian alphabet. Fishta was elected as the chairman of the committee, and although he praised the development of the Bashkimi alphabet, he declared that he had not arrived to defend any one of the alphabets; rather, he had come to unite with his countrymen and adopt the alphabet which the committee decided would be the most useful. Fishta's words deeply moved the audience, and Hoxha Ibrahim Efendi, a Muslim Albanian clergyman, rushed towards Fishta and embraced him with tears in his eyes.

After three successive days of discussion, the committee was unable to choose a single alphabet, and opted for the use of both the Bashkimi alphabet and Sami Frashëri's "Istanbul" alphabet, but with some changes to reduce the differences between the two. In response to those who were disappointed that the committee had chosen two written scripts rather than one, Fishta noted that German also had two written scripts, and after some discussion, the decision for the use of both the Bashkimi and Istanbul alphabets was accepted by all the delegates. Usage of the Istanbul alphabet declined rapidly and became obsolete over the following years as Albania declared its independence; in contrast, the Bashkimi alphabet functioned as the predecessor of the official alphabet of the Albanian language that is in use today.

In 1913, Fishta founded the monthly Hylli i Drites, one of the most important cultural periodicals in Albania prior to 1944, and during 1916–1919, he edited the biweekly Posta e Shqypnis (The herald of Albania) in Shkodër. In August 1919, Fishta served as the secretary-general of the Albanian delegation that attended the Paris Peace Conference, and he was later asked by the delegation's president Luigj Bumçi to join a special commission that was to be sent to the United States of America on behalf of the Albanian state. As part of the commission, Fishta visited Boston, New York and Washington.

In 1921, Fishta was elected to the Albanian parliament as a representative of Shkodër, and in August of that year was made vice president of the assembly. Fishta attended numerous Balkan conferences, such as in Athens in 1930, in Sofia in 1931, and in Bucharest in 1932. However, he eventually withdrew from public life and devoted his remaining years to his literary works as well as the Franciscan order, where he held the office of provincial of the Albanian Franciscans from 1935 to 1938. He spent the later years of his life in seclusion at the Franciscan monastery of Gjuhadol in Shkodër.