Juan Gelman - 2007 - Argentina

Juan Gelman (born 3 May 1930) is an Argentine poet. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956. He won the Cervantes Prize in 2007, the most important in Spanish literature. His poems contain themes touching on his Jewish heritage, family, Argentina, exile, and the tango. His works celebrate life but are also tempered with social and political commentary and reflect his own painful experiences with the politics of his country.

Juan Gelman was born in Buenos Aires, in the Villa Crespo neighborhood, in 1930. He was the third son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He learned how to read when he was three years old, and spent a lot of his childhood biking, playing soccer, and reading. He developed an interest in poetry at a very young age, influenced by his brother Boris who was an avid reader. He read Dostoevsky's The Insulted and Humiliated at eight, and subsequently became feverish in the days following. As a young man, he was part of many literary groups and later got an important job as a journalist.