There must be not one person in a thousand who can give anything like true pronunciation of your name apart from fact that it is so very exotic that all sorts of inferences may be drawn. Writing to Iris Milutinovic in 1973 about pending publication of her short story, From Leo-With Love in New Writing, volume editor Oscar Mendelsohn continued: the publisher was surprised to hear from me that you are both born and of a family with an English name.1 Although Mendelsohn recommended that use her maiden name and Milutinovic agreed with this recommendation, story appeared, first in volume, under Iris Milutinovic.2Milutinovic was already known by her married name to readers by 1970s, particularly through some magazine publications, regional and national broadcasts of her stories on ABC, and her co-founding and brief presidency of Western Branch of Fellowship of Writers (in 1963). She was well into her forties before becoming regularly published, but once started to write, Milutinovic could not stop. She wrote more than 40 broadcasts for ABC, but her preference was for stories. do want to write short stories more than anything else-but market is difficult, wrote to John Griffin. Of course I'm aware that writing as I do it is important to writer. So many write better, a few worse. But I expect I'll keep on trying. I mean-how can one stop (1.9). In 1970s, Milutinovic began to receive significant public recognition of her writing, with several awards and some critical accolades for her short stories; finally, a book-length work was published by Hyland House.Iris Milutinovic, nee Osborne, was a remarkable woman. As John McLaren describes in an article for Library Chronicle of University of Texas at Austin, she creates for herself traditional persona of 'the battler,' one whose skeptical sense of humor enables her to mix at all levels of society. He characterizes her writing as whimsical in tone and with sentiments qualified by a lightly self-mocking irony, in itself typical of rural idiom (154). She was born during first decade of twentieth century and grew up in Cooee, Tasmania. On her mother's side was a Burnell and closely related to Dame Enid Lyons.3 Iris married young (at age 18), and this soon unhappy marriage to a former Irish Guardsman from County Clare took her to mainland Australia. After 13 years, marriage ended, but did not simply return home to Tasmania. She made her own way in a harsh world, working for Public Service during World War II and eventually at post office where met Milor Milutinovic, a Yugoslavian immigrant manual laborer who spoke very little English. Their mutual attraction obviously overcame language barrier. They were married in 1951 and shortly thereafter moved to Albany, pursuing Milor's dream to own and work his own land, a dream that came true in a hardscrabble way. Although apparently always struggling economically, couple did come to own land that they were later able to sell off, paying for a trip home for Milor, a journey to Tasmania to see Iris's mother, and with last bit of land, a move to Tasmania for both of them in 1977.Iris spent almost thirty years living with Milor near Albany, WA, describing herself as only native born Australian along two miles of dirt road. Her short stories and chapters in her unpublished novel Street of Seven Tongues, often detail trials faced by new immigrants and, in one instance, by a part Aboriginal family trying to make its way in English-Australian world. Milor never gave much effort to learning English and struggled with this language barrier all of his life in Australia. (His inability to communicate in English frustrated Iris to point that wrote to Minister of Education and suggested that immigrants be required to have some proficiency in English before being allowed into Australia. …