Wisława Szymborska

Polish poet and Nobel laureate (1923-2012)

Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent, she resided in Kraków until the end of her life. In Poland, Szymborska's books have reached sales rivaling prominent prose authors, though she wrote in a poem, "Some Like Poetry", that "perhaps" two in a thousand people like poetry.