Miguel Delibes was born in Valladolid, Spain on October 17, 1920. During the Spanish civil war, he served in the navy. In 1941, he worked as a cartoonist for Valladolid's main paper, El Norte de Castilla (The North of Castile). A year later, he wrote his first article and by 1944 was a reporter. He became editor of El Norte de Castilla in 1958, but was forced to resign in 1963. His first novel, La Sombra del Cipr�s es Alargada (The Cypress Casts a Long Shadow), won the Nadal prize in 1948. His other works include A�n es de D�a (It's Still Light), Las Ratas (The Rats), Cinco Horas con Mario (Five Hours with Mario), Los Santos Inocentes (The Holy Innocents), La Tierra Herida (The… Wounded Earth), and El Hereje (The Heretic). He won numerous awards including the National Literature prize in 1955 and 1999, the Pr�ncipe de Asturias in 1982, and the Cervantes Prize in 1994. He died on March 12, 2010 at the age of 89.