Baiba Bičole

Baiba Bičole, born in Latvia in 1931, left as a refugee during World War II, and since 1950 has lived in the United States. Though she has been a major Latvian poet since the 1970s, until Latvia regained its independence in 1991, she was known primarily in the West, as an exile poet, her work banned in Soviet-occupied Latvia. She is the author of six collections of poetry, and has received important Latvian literary awards, from the Zinaīda Lazda Foundation, the Raisters Foundation, and the World Federation of Free Latvians (PBLA). For many years she taught Latvian literature in Latvian American schools and was the editor of the Latvian newspaper Laiks.