Gabriela Mistral biography

Profile

Poet Gabriela Mistral was born on April 7, 1889, in Vicuña, Chile. She became a schoolteacher at age 15 and later a college professor, cultural minister and diplomat. In 1914, she won a Chilean prize for three "Sonetos de la muerte" ("Sonnets of Death"). The suicide of her lover influenced her work. Mistral won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, becoming the first Latin American to receive that honor.