Born in Fishtë, Dajç, Lezhë, Albania (then Ottoman Empire), Fishta studied philosophy and Catholic theology in Bosnia. In 1902, he became the head of the Franciscan gymnasium in Shkodër. Fishta was under influence of Franciscan monks as a student in monasteries in Austria-Hungary, when he wrote his main work Lahuta e Malcis, influenced by the national epics of the Croatian and Montenegrin literature.
Fishta participated and was elected for president of the committee in the Congress of Monastir (today Bitola in Macedonia, then Ottoman Empire) held in 1908. Participants of the congress accepted Fishta's proposal for the Latin Bashkimi alphabet to be the standard Albanian alphabet, rejecting proposals that the Arabic alphabet be used.
He interpreted Albania in the conference of Paris on 1919. From the beginning of April 1919 to 1920, he served as Secretary of the Albanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. At the end of 1920, he was elected to parliament by Shkodër, and in 1921 he became the Vice President of the Albanian parliament.
After the establishment of the Zogu Regime, Fishta left willingly to go into exile in Italy in 1925/26, before he resumed his position as teacher and writer in Shkodër, where he died in 1940.
Through both his work as a teacher as well as through his literary works, Fishta had a great influence on the development of the written form of his native Gheg Albanian. Fishta worked moreover as a translator (of Molière, Manzoni, Homer, et al.).
Fishta was editor of the magazine 'Hylli i Dritës' (1913) and the newspaper 'Posta e Shypnisë' (1916–1917).
His noted works include the epic poem Lahuta e Malcís, the melodrama Shqiptari i qytetnuem, the tragedy Juda Makabe, and the satire Anzat e Parnasit.