Wisława Szymborska (born July 2, 1923) is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. Honored by the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 and by numerous other awards, she is generally considered the most important living Polish poet. In Poland, her books reach sales rivaling prominent prose authors — although she once remarked in a poem entitled "Some like poetry" [Niektorzy lubia poezje] that no more than two out of a thousand people care for the art.

Szymborska frequently employs literary devices, such as irony, paradox, contradiction, and understatement, to illuminate underlying philosophical themes and obsessions. Szymborska is a miniaturist, whose compact poems often conjure large existential puzzles. Although most of Szymborska's poems are barely a page in length, they often touch on issues of ethical import, reflecting on the condition of Man both as individual and member of human society. Szymborska's style is marked by intellectual introspection, wit, and a succinct and stylish choice of words.

Szymborska's reputation rests on a relatively small body of work: she has not published more than 250 poems. As a person, she is often described as modest to the point of shyness. Long cherished by her Polish literary contemporaries (including Czesław Miłosz), Szymborska became much better known in international circles after her 1996 Nobel Prize. Szymborska's work has been translated into many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.