Grigory Kanovich (also Grigorijus Kanovičius) (born 1929) is one of the most prominent modern Jewish writers, winner of Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts for 2014. Kanovich was born into a traditional Jewish family in the Lithuanian town of Jonava on June 18, 1929. At the age of twelve, with the outbreak of Second World War on the Eastern Front, Kanovich became a refugee, fleeing with his parents through Latvia to Russia, where the family spent the rest of the war. He returned to Lithuania after the war and settled in Vilnius, where he studied at Vilnius University.