Gioconda Belli is one of contemporary Central America’s best known writers and one of the few women writers from this region whose works have been translated and published in the United States and throughout Europe. Belli’s literary career has from its beginning been intimately connected to her political life and the political life of her country, Nicaragua. The Sandinista revolution, which ousted the dictator Somoza in 1979, generated widespread international solidarity in the 1970s and 1980s. The image of youthful Sandinista revolutionaries who were often poets, artists and intellectuals, appealed to many and Gioconda Belli was one of the revolution’s most articulate spokespersons.