Juana de Ibarbourou wrote poetry for almost sixty years. Her verses have moved readers in her native Uruguay and around the world. She was the first recipient of Uruguay's National Prize for Literature in 1959. Though she is often labeled a feminine poet and a children's writer, she also wrote daring love poems full of intense natural imagery. Along with such authors as fellow Uruguayan Delmira Agustina and the Chilean Gabriela Mistral, she is remembered as one of the formative female voices of twentieth-century Latin American poetry.

The woman who became known as "Juana de América" (Juana of America) was born Juana Fernández in the town of Melo, Uruguay. The exact date of her birth is unclear; some sources give her birth date as 8 March 1892, though others point to 1894 or 1895. Her father, Vicente Fernández, an immigrant from Lugo, Spain, met his wife, Valentina...