Inspired Pen — A Literary Life

~Gabriela Mistral, Chilean Poet, Educator, Diplomat~ 

Gabriel Mistral was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. Mistral excelled in three careers: as a poet, as an educator, and as a cultural ambassador and Consul throughout Europe and the Americas.

Gabriela Mistral (April 7, 1889 — January 10, 1957) was the pseudonym of Lucila de Maria del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga.   She was born in Vicna, Chile, and raised in a small village of Montegrande. Her first teacher in the primary school was her older sister, Emelina Molina, who she respected greatly. Throughout her early years she was never far from poverty.

Her poetry including Ternura and Lagar captures the private passions and tragedies that haunted her life. Raised by her mother who was a teacher, she began to write after the suicide of her first love in 1909. Some of her works  including selected poems and anthology were published after she died.

She was loved and respected in her native country and abroad for her emotional honesty, her nationalist aspirations for her country, and her lyrical poetry.    

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