6pm, Saturday 24 October
Online, Free
Georgia is the first country partner of the Bristol Festival of Literature and we are delighted to be able to host three of the country’s leading literary figures.
Georgia Calling will focus on literature in the post-Soviet era. These were peculiar times for Georgia in general and for Georgian literature in particular. The economy collapsed and publishing was utterly impossible. Yet new translations somehow began to appear of authors who were unavailable in Soviet times. It was as if Georgian literature was trying to catch up with everything it had missed in the previous 70 years. Richard Jones from Tangent Books will explore Georgia’s fascinating literary landscape with three guests before opening the event to questions…
Our Georgian guests are:
Eka Kevanishvili is a poet and journalist with a particular interest in internal politics, social and healthcare issues and human rights. She has worked as an investigative reporter for leading Georgian newspapers and trains regional journalist in Georgia. Eka has written six books – four poetry collections, one volume of short stories plus a collection of essays and interviews. All of her poetry collections were nominated for the main Georgian literature award SABA and were shortlisted, in 2014 she received the SABA award for the best poetry collection of the year (Selling The House). She is also the winner of numerous journalism and poetry competitions. Her poems have been translated into English, German, Russian, Turkish, Italian, Lithuanian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovakian and Polish. Find out more about Eka here.
Davit Gabunia is a Georgian translator, award-winning playwright, and author. His debut novel, Falling Apart, was published in 2017 and became a best-seller in Georgia. It has since been translated into German. Inside Georgia, Gabunia is also known for having translated the Harry Potter series of novels, as well as for being an outspoken pro-Europeanist. Find out more about Davit here.
Aka Morchiladze is the pen name of Giorgi Akhvlediani, a Georgian writer and literary historian who is one of the key figures in the birth of new Georgian literature and who has written some of the best-selling prose in the post-Soviet era. Morchiladze's work is rooted in the re-orientation of early 21st-century Georgian literature towards Western influences. He splits his time between Georgia and London. Find out more about Aka here.