Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral was born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga. She was born in Vicuña, Chile in 1889. She was raised in a small Andean village called Montegrande. Her sister was the teacher in the school. Her father was also a schoolteacher, however he abandoned the family when she was three years old. When she was fifteen she was supporting her family by being a teacher’s aid. She became an elementary school teacher and then went on to be a college professor. A railroad worker named Romelio Ureta and Gabriela met and fell in love. He committed suicide later, that’s when she began to write poetry. Her poetry was based on her emotions which were pain and suffering. On December 22, 1914, she was awarded first prize in a national literature contest. The contest was called Juegos Floarales. The poems she entered in the contest were called Sonetos de la Muerte, or Sonnets of Death. She used the pen name Gabriela Mistral in all of her works. She got the name from the names of her two favorite poets, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Frederic Mistral. Between the years 1926 and 1932 she lived primarily in France and Italy, while she was in these countries, she worked for the League for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. She went to conferences of women and educators throughout the world. She received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1945, she was the first Latin American woman to receive the award. Gabriela Mistral died in 1957, working as a consul.