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Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) was a poet, writer, and translator who was born in present-day Lithuania. His first book of poetry was published in 1934. After World War II, where he spent his time in Warsaw, Miłosz defected to Paris in 1951, and the Communist government of Poland banned his works. He emigrated to the United States in 1960, where he began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. It would not be until the Iron Curtain fell that Miłosz would be able to return to Poland, where he split his time between Poland and the United States until the time of his death. He won the 1978 Neustadt Prize.