Leonid Schwab was born in 1961 in Bobruisk and moved to Orenburg at the age of six. He graduated from Moscow State Technological University in 1983, then lived and worked in Vladimir from 1985-1990. After emigrating to Israel in 1990 he settled in Jerusalem, where he works as an IT professional. In 2004, Schwab was included in the shortlist for the Andrei Bely Prize, Russia's most prestigious prize for poetry. He published his first book of poems, Poverit' v botaniku (To Believe in Botany), in 2005. In 2008, along with Fyodor Svarovsky and Arseniy Rovinsky, he appeared in the book-length compilation Vse Srazu (All at Once). His next book of poetry Vash Nikolai (Yours Nikolai), published in 2015, was awarded the Andrei Bely Prize the following year.
