Storni is considered one of the most important Latin American poets of the modernist era. Born in Switzerland to an Argentine industrialist, she primarily grew up in Europe. When her fathers business failed, they opened a tavern where she also worked. She studied there, and belonged to a traveling theatre company where she acted. She taught school and wrote for local magazines, and then at age 19, she moved to Argentina.

She sought the anonymity of a big city and she found it in Buenos Aires. She wrote for a small magazine, published some of her poems on a small scale, worked as a cashier and had an illegitimate son by a journalist. She was very much a modern woman, and working very hard at her poetry. She became friendly with enough poets and writes that she was soon accepted into their circles and then began teaching literature at a university. It can be said that she was one of Argentinas first real feminists, and that was the theme of much of her poetry. She always referred to men as enemies and so much of her poetry focused on what she felt men did to women. They repressed them. Her poetry was often very insulting to men, and it says a great deal for all of the male writers she was friendly with during those years but she slide into a type of isolation that she only came out of on moving back to Europe. For a time, she wrote again, but she was in ill health with breast cancer and while some of her most powerful work came during this time, it didnt last. She returned to Argentina, and one day simply walked into the sea near La Perla beach and drowned.

Storni is one of Argentinas most famous women poets and is considered a cornerstone of the Latin American modernist movement.

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