Photo: Giovanni Giovannetti/Grazia Neri, Public domain — Source
American poet, novelist, and short story writer who became one of the most influential and widely studied poets of the 20th century. Her confessional poetry — raw, vivid, and psychologically penetrating — explored themes of mental illness, the female body, family, and death with an intensity that was unprecedented. Her only novel, 'The Bell Jar' (1963), is a semi-autobiographical account of a young woman's mental breakdown. She won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1982 for 'The Collected Poems.' Her tumultuous marriage to Ted Hughes and her suicide at age 30 have made her a complex, enduring cultural figure.
Source: Poetry Foundation