Czesław Miłosz (born June 30, 1911, Szetejnie, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire – died August 14, 2004, Kraków, Poland) was a Nobel Prize-winning poet, writer and translator. He was born to Polish parents in what is now Lithuania, and during the Second World War, he worked with the underground Resistance movement in Warsaw. He defected in 1951, later becoming an American citizen, and lived in exile until 1981. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980.