Poetess Gabriela Mistral was Latin America’s first (and thus far only) woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Vicuña, Chile on April 7, 1889, her given name was Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga. At 15 years old, she became a schoolteacher and began composing poetry; several of her early poems concerned the suicide of her lover. Gabriela continued publishing verse as she taught elementary and secondary students in Chile, the United States, and Mexico.
