Alejandra Pizarnik was born in 1936, in Avellaneda, Buenos Aires, to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland. After a difficult childhood, she began studies at the University of Buenos Aires, and shortly afterwards published her first poetry collection. She dropped out of university in order to study painting, and published two further poetry collections in the 1950s. From 1960-1964, Pizarnik lived in Paris, working for the magazine Cuadernos and several French publications. She published widely while there, and translated the works of Artaud, Michaux, Césaire, Bonnefoy and Duras. She also studied at the Sorbonne, where she became close to Julio Cortázar, Silvina Ocampo and Octavio Paz. The latter wrote an introduction for her fourth collection, Árbol de Diana (1962). She returned to Buenos Aires in 1964, and published the books which were to make her name: Los trabajos y las noches (1965), Extracción de la piedra de la locura (1968) and El infierno musical (1971). Alejandra Pizarnik took her own life in 1972, taking an overdose of barbiturates one weekend when she was on short release from the psychiatric hospital where she was under care.