Gabriela’s literary calling became evident very early in life.At 16 she was already writing for the newspapers and journals of her native region.Gradually she became known for her antibourgeois social ideas and for her verses influenced be Modernism. Professor Manuel Gómez Maturana’s inclusion of some of her prose and poetry in his Books for Reading (Libros de Lectura) brought her to the attention of the intellectual circles of Chile.She also began to win fame abroad, both for the writings she published in the press and for the correspondence she carried on with notable Hispanic-American writers, among them Rubén Darío himself.The prize she won in 1914 at the Floral Games of Santiago and the trip to Mexico consolidated her national and inter-American reputation. 

In February 1921, Federico de Onís, a professor at Columbia University and an excellent critic, lectured on Gabriela’s poetic work to a group of North American professors.On their initiative, her poems were compiled and published.Thus in 1922, the Hispanic Institute of New York published the first edition of Desolation (Desolación).With this publication the literary name of Gabriela Mistral definitively replaced her own name of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. 

The adoption of this pseudonymn revealed, as always occurs in these cases, something of her conception of the world and of man: “Gabriela,” for the archangel Gabriel, divine messenger of good news; “Mistral,” for the strong hot wind of Provence.Both components contained spiritual symbols.It was Gabriela’s custom to classify people into three groups: children of air, of water, and of fire.Those of air were the intelligent ones, distinguished by their grace and spirit; she believed firmly in the archangels as creatures of pure spirit and intelligence and as mediators between God and men. 

After there were long intervals between the publication of her other books of verses: Tenderness (Ternura), 1924; Felling (Tala), 1938. She was, however, constantly publishing new poems in the Hispanic-American press, and she began extensive and continuous journalistic work as a correspondent for the principal journals and newspapers of the Americas: El Mercurio of Vhile, La Nación and Crítica of Argentina, El Tiempo of Columbia, El Universal of Caracas, El Universal of Mexico, Sur of Buenos Aires, Atenea of Chile, Repertorio Americano of Costa Rica, Revista Bimestre Cubana of Cuba, Puerto Rico Illustrado, and La nueva democracia. 

Her journalistic work was initiated in the local press of Chile in about 1907 and, after extending through all Hispano-America, it continued without interruption for about fifty years until her death in 1957. Most of these contributions were written in prose that had a personal accent and style, as beautiful and interesting as her poetry.When she was in foreign countries – Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, the United States – she also contributed to the newspapers and her articles were translated into the respective national languages. 

Her articles for the press dealt with the most varied themes: contemporary events, persons, places and things, literary criticism, social, political, moral, religious, pedagogical, and aesthetic questions.Her pen was always at the service of truth, goodness, justice, liberty, and peace and was inspired by a Christian and democratic humanism. 

Perhaps it was the profound value of her poetry as a work of art and as a human document and of her prose as an expression of values essential to contemporary man that for her the highest literary award in the world, the Nobel Prize for Literature, presented to her in Sweden on November 15,1945.She was both the first woman and the first Hispanic-American writer to receive this high universal recognition. 

During the last twelve years of her life she continued to write poetry and prose for the newspapers in spite of her pitiful spiritual state and the illness that sapped her physical energies.In 1951, while in Rapallo, she received the National Award for Chilean Literature.In 1954 she published her last book, Wine Press (Lagar), and was preparing a “Song to Chile” (Canto a Chile), a long poem of eulogy and love for her country, which remains partially unpublished.