Paraskevi Qiriazi was born on June 2, 1880 in Manastir (today the Republic of North Macedonia).She was a Teacher of the People, a master of education, a lecturer, an outstanding intellectual, an activist for the education of Albanian women, a participant of the Monastery Congress, the author of the first Albanian primer according to the alphabet of the Monastery and of its anthem, the first Albanian female author of an educational project.

As a child, Paraskevia learned five languages and later, in his youth, he learned to speak two more. Although small in stature, her influence was extraordinary. After graduating in 1904 from the American College for Girls in Constantinople, where in the last year she was president of the students, she was appointed director and teacher of the Girls’ School, the first such school in Albania, from 1904-1905 and again from 1910-1911 , when her sister, Sevasti Qiriazi, was not there. From 1907-1908, Paraskevia was the translator and language teacher for the missionary Phineas B. Kennedy, who had just arrived sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions) at the request of the School itself.

In 1908, Paraskevia was the delegate of the Girls’ School in the historical event of the Congress of Bitola, where she was appointed secretary of eleven respectable men, who would solve the problem of the Albanian alphabet. Then, in 1909, she wrote the Primer according to the new Albanian alphabet. She is known, together with her sister, for the emancipation of Albanian women and for her leading role in founding the first women’s association “Morning Star” in 1912 in the city of Korça. In 1913 she completed her master’s degree in education at Oberlin College in Ohio. In her master’s thesis, she designed a national education system for the newly liberated Albania.

After the Balkan wars and the beginning of World War I, she fled to Bucharest in 1914 and then to the United States in 1915. In Boston, where she settled, she dedicated her life to the cause of the liberation of her country and the emancipation of women, founding and publishing the Albanian-American magazine Morning Star, which appeared from 1917 to 1920. In 1919 she sailed to Paris as the only Albanian woman diplomat at the Peace Conference, where she represents the Albanian National Party in America. Despite vigorous campaigns to divide Albania between neighboring countries, the conference generally approved the Albanian borders, as determined in 1913 at the London Peace Conference.

At the beginning of the 1920s, Paraskevia returned to her homeland with her brother-in-law and sister, Kristo and Sevasti Qiriazi-Dakon, in order to continue working for the education of Albanian girls. The Qiriazi (Kyrias) Institute for Girls, which had just opened near Tirana, would produce teachers who were indispensable for many newly opened Albanian schools. 

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