Gioconda Belli

(Managua, 1948) is a Nicaraguan poet, writer and political activist. She was involved in the Nicaraguan Revolution from a very young age and occupied important positions in the Sandinista Party and in the revolutionary government. She left the Sandinista Party in 1993. She debuted in 1970 with publications in magazines, wrote politically and erotically oriented poems and received her first literary award in 1972 with many prizes to follow. Her debut novel La Mujer Habitada (The Inhabited Woman), published in 1988, was her international breakthrough. Belli now is a bestselling author whose works have been translated in twenty languages. She now is an influential critic of the government of her former fellow party member Ortega.