Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist, and oral historian who writes in Russian. She was born on 31 May 1948. Alexievich was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time. She is notably the first writer from Belarus to receive this prestigious award.

Born in Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine, her father was Belarusian and her mother Ukrainian. Alexievich grew up in Belarus where both her parents were teachers. She studied journalism at the University of Minsk and worked as a teacher, journalist, and editor. In Minsk, she worked at the newspaper Sel'skaja Gazeta. Her criticism of the political regimes in the Soviet Union and thereafter Belarus has periodically forced her to live abroad, including in Italy, France, Germany, and Sweden.

Through her books, Alexievich depicts life during and after the Soviet Union through the experiences of individuals. She uses interviews to create a collage of a wide range of voices in her "documentary novels".