Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral, was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator, and Catholic. She was a member of the Secular Franciscan Order or Third Franciscan order. She was the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world". Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences. Her image is featured on the 5,000 Chilean peso banknote.

Poet-diplomats are poets who have also served their countries as diplomats. The best known poet-diplomats are perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Wyatt; the category also includes recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Ivo Andrić, Gabriela Mistral, Saint-John Perse, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, George Seferis, Czesław Miłosz and Octavio Paz. Contemporary poet-diplomats include Abhay K, Indran Amirthanayagam, Kofi Awoonor, Philip McDonagh and Yiorgos Chouliaras.