About: Winétt de Rokha

Winétt de Rokha was the mid-career pen name of the Chilean poet and writer Luisa Victoria Anabalón Sanderson (July 7, 1892 – August 7, 1951). Born to a patrician Catholic family in Santiago, she published two books before she was twenty-one—under another pseudonym, Juana Inés de la Cruz (a variation upon the name of the seventeenth century Mexican poet and nun). In 1916, she met and eloped with the poet Pablo de Rokha (who was born Carlos Diaz Loyola). Together they invented her nom de plume. The De Rokha marriage produced nine children, seven of whom survived infancy. The De Rokha family, though touched several times by tragedy, became a famously accomplished Chilean clan.