Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana (1948) was born in Ukraine, but grew up in Belarus. She is an investigative journalist and writer. Her books document the emotional history of the Soviet and post-Soviet people. Her books include War's Unwomanly Face (which sold in more than 2 million copies), The Last Witnesses: the Book of Unchildlike Stories, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War and Voices from Chernobyl.

Svetlana has won numerous awards including the Kurt Tucholsky Prize for the “Courage and Dignity in Writing” (the Swedish PEN), the Andrei Sinyavsky Prize “For the Nobility in Literature”, the independent Russian prize “Triumph”, the Leipzig Prize “For the European Mutual Understanding- 1998″, the German prizes “For the Best Political Book” and the Herder Prize. In 2015 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

She was ICORN guest writer of Gothenburg City of Refuge from 2006-2008.

See Alexievich's address to the ICORN General Assembly in Paris 30 March 2016: On the conditions of writers and artists in exile