Ida Vitale was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1923. She is one of Latin America's most celebrated and respected poets. Vitale has published over thirty works of poetry, prose, and literary criticism, in addition to numerous translations. In Uruguay and Mexico, where she lived in exile, she was an important intellectual figure. In the late 1980s, Vitale settled in Austin, TX until her return to Montevideo in 2016, after the death of her husband. She is the fifth woman to win the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the highest accolade in Spanish. Her awards include the National Prize in Uruguay, the Reina Sofía Prize, the Octavio Paz Prize, the García Lorca Prize, and the Max Jacob Prize. In 2019, the BBC named her one of the world's 100 most influential women.