Gabriela Mistral
(1889–1957)

Born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, the poet Gabriela Mistral, was the first Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mistral, of Spanish, Basque, and Indian descent, grew up in a village in Vicuña, Chile, where she became a schoolteacher at the age of 15. She later became a college professor, a cultural minister, and a diplomat.

Throughout all of these different occupations, Mistral was always a poet. However, it was only in 1914, after winning a Chilean prize for three of her poems, that Mistral's reputation grew as a poet. It was also at this time that she took on the pseudonym by which she has since been known. She chose the name by combining the names of her two favorite poets, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral.

Mistral's works include Ternura ("Tenderness"), 1924; Tala ("Destruction"), 1938; and Lagar ("The Wine Press"), 1954. In 1957, a translation of her work by the American poet Langston Hughes, was published. She died that same year in Hempstead, New York.

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