Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer who writes in Russian. Her father is Belarusian and her mother is Ukrainian. After her father’s demobilisation from the army, the family returned to his native Belorussia and settled in a village where both parents worked as schoolteachers. She left school to work as a reporter on the local paper in the town of Narovl. She went on to a career in journalism, and has written short stories and reportage, in which she’s covered the Chernobyl catastrophe, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and many other events – all based on thousands of interviews with witnesses. Svetlana received the Nobel prize in literature 2015.

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievitch, née le 31 mai 1948 à Stanislav, est une personnalité littéraire et journaliste russophone soviétique puis biélorusse.

Le 8 octobre 2015, le prix Nobel de littérature lui est attribué pour « son œuvre polyphonique, mémorial de la souffrance et du courage à notre époque », ce qui fait d'elle la première femme de langue russe à recevoir la distinction.