Authors
Oksana Zabuzhko is a contemporary Ukrainian writer, poet and essayist. Born in Lutsk, Ukraine, Zabuzhko studied philosophy at the Kyiv University, where she also obtained her doctorate in aesthetics in 1987. In 1992 she taught at Penn State University as a visiting writer. Zabuzhko won a Fulbright scholarship in 1994 and taught Ukrainian literature at Harvard and University of Pittsburgh. Currently Zabuzhko works at the Hryhori Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Zabuzhko is known both for her literary works and criticism. Her controversial bestselling novel Field Work in Ukrainian Sex was translated in eight languages. In her writing Zabuzhko draws a lot of attention to the questions of Ukrainian self-identification, post-colonial issues and feminism. Her book Let My People Go won the Korrespondent magazine Best Ukrainian documentary book award in June 2006, and The Museum of Abandoned Secrets, Best Ukrainian Book 2010. For Ukrainian language profile see Оксана Забужко
Svetlana Alexievich was 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 to be a journalist at the University of Minsk and worked a teacher, journalist and editor. In Minsk she has worked at the newspaper Sel'skaja Gazeta, Alexievich's criticism of the political regimes in the Soviet Union and thereafter Belarus has periodically forced her to live abroad, for example in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden. Svetlana Alexievich depicts life during and after the Soviet Union through the experience of individuals. In her books she uses interviews to create a collage of a wide range of voices. With her "documentary novels", Svetlana Alexievich, who is a journalist, moves in the boundary between reporting and fiction. Her major works are her grand cycle Voices of Utopia, which consists of five parts. Svetlana Alexievich's books criticize political regimes in both the Soviet Union and later Belarus. In 2015 Ms Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
