Gabriela Mistral

Bio

(1889-1957)(Lucila Godoy Alcayaga) Gabriela Mistral was born in Chile. She was the only Latin American woman to have won a Nobel Prize. She studied at the Pedagogical College in Santiago, became a secondary school teacher, taught in the Liceode los Andes (1912-1918), and rose to important posts in the Chilean educational system. She helped to reorganize the rural schools of Mexico (1922-24) and was visiting professor at Barnard, Vassar, and Middlebury colleges in the United States in 1931-32. She also served on the Committee of Arts and Letters of the League of Nations (1926-1939) and as Chilean consul in Madrid, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, Nice, and Los Angeles. Her literary life is just as remarkable; she won first prize at the Juegos Florales of Santiago in 1914, her poems were collected and published in such books as “La voz de Elqui” (1908); “Sonetos de la muerte” (1914); “Desolacion” (1922), which was published in New York; “Ternura” (1925); “Nubes blancas” (1930); “La oraciÓn de la muestra” (1930); and “Tala” (1938). She received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1945. She lived in Roslyn Harbor, and died in Hempstead.