Gabriel García Márquez, (born March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Colombia—died April 17, 2014), was a Colombian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, mostly for his 1967 novel Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude). He was the fourth Latin American to receive the award, preceded by Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral in 1945 and Pablo Neruda in 1971, and by Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias in 1967. In addition to his masterly approach to the novel, he was a superb crafter of short stories and an accomplished journalist. In both his shorter and longer fictions, García Márquez achieved the rare feat of being accessible to the common reader while satisfying the most demanding of sophisticated critics. He is often considered to be the founder of “magic realism”, a type of writing that fuses supernatural elements into real life settings. Other novels include Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Love in the Time of Cholera along with dozens of short stories. When he died in April of 2014 the president of Colombia declared him the “greatest Colombian who ever lived”.  Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica.

You can read more about his life and career here, and be sure to stop by the GHC Library or your local library to check out his written works. And be on the lookout for more information on influential figures of Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as events!