Octavio Paz (1914–1998)

Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City, Mexico on March 31, 1914. In 1938, he became one of the founders of the journal, Taller. In 1943, he travelled to the United States on a Guggenheim Fellowship where he became immersed in Anglo-American Modernist poetry. He entered the Mexican diplomatic service in 1945 and was sent to France then India. In 1968, he resigned from the diplomatic service in protest against the government's suppression of the student demonstrations during the Olympic Games in Mexico. He was a poet and an essayist. His works include The Labyrinth of Solitude, The Grammarian Monkey, East Slope, and The Other Mexico. He received numerous awards including the Cervantes award in 1981, the American Neustadt Prize in 1982, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990. He also worked as an editor and publisher. He founded two magazines dedicated to the arts and politics: Plural and Vuelta. He died of cancer on April 19, 1998. (Bowker Author Biography)

— biography from The Labyrinth of Solitude

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