Passion or Profession: Poet

Period: 1904–1973

Neruda was born in the town of Parral and raised in Temuco. He spent much of his life as a diplomat, filling consulships around the globe while producing some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century. A prolific writer, he published thousands of pages in multiple volumes, with works ranging from the romantic to the political. Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971.