Vitaly Korotich is a Soviet, Ukrainian and Russian writer and journalist.Born in 1936 in Kyiv, he graduated from the Kyiv Medical University in 1959 and worked as a doctor between 1959 and 1966. Later, he became a full-time writer, and served as an officer of the Union of Soviet Writers. In the late 1970s, Korotich became the editor of Vsesvit. a Ukrainian literary magazine in Kyiv specializing in publishing literary works translated from foreign languages. His magazine was described at the time as one "that probably prints more of the latest American fiction than any magazine in Moscow."