Tbilisi hosting prominent authors for Festival of Literature

Georgia’s capital Tbilisi will be the go-to place for local and visiting enthusiasts of literature over this week, as the city hosts its third International Festival of Literature starting today.

Over 20 visiting authors from 17 countries will meet their Georgian counterparts as well as audience of the festival’s events.

Organised by the Writers’ House of Georgia, the event will host prominent authors including Keats Memorial Prize-winning British poet Richard Berengarten and German Literary Prize-winning writer Ulla Lenze.

Award-winning German writer Ulla Lenze will meet literary enthusiasts at the festival. Photo: Das blaue Sofa/Club Bertelsmann.

It will be hosted at seven locations in Tbilisi, including the Writers’ House, Goethe Institute Georgia and Royal District Theatre.

The festival will feature a focus on invited German authors and publishers as well as celebrate the ongoing anniversary year of German-Georgian diplomatic relations.

Moreover, the event is seen as a platform for intensifying preparations for Georgia’s participation as official Guest of Honour in next year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest international literary fair held in Germany.

As part of the festival’s focus on the German-Georgian relations, it will see six Georgian and six German authors team up for travels to regions of Georgia.

Author Tomas Venclova teaches Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University in the US. Photo: Tbilisi International Festival of Literature.

Their experiences to be detailed in works later published as a book by a German publishing house. The publication will also be presented at the Frankfurt fair.

While a press conference for the festival was already held in Tbilisi earlier today, the event will be officially launched at the Writers’ House this evening.

Following the opening day, events of the festival over the next four days will see authors meet audiences in Tbilisi.

These visiting figures of international literature will include Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winning German author Katja Lange-Mueller, United States-based Lithuanian writer and teacher Tomas Venclova and Bernstein Prize-winning Israeli poet Amir Or.

Georgian psychologist and author Tamar Tandashvili will team up with author Nino Kharatishvili to host a panel discussion at the event. Photo: feminism-boell.org.

Follow-up events of the festival will also include Germany-based Georgian author Nino Kharatishvili and Tbilisi-based psychologist and author Tamar Tandashvili hosting a panel discussion within the Goethe Institute Georgia project Perspective — Talks on Literature.

Along with the Georgian hosts the event will feature Berlin-based columnist and author Katja Petrowskaja, Katja Lange-Mueller and Leipzig Book Fair Prize-winning writer Clemens Meyer.

As part of the closing events of the festival, a marathon of 10 young poets reading their literary creations will be held at the Writers’ House on June 2.

Launched in 2015, the Tbilisi International Festival of Literature is held to act as a "platform between Georgian and international authors and humanists”.

Last year’s festival hosted visiting authors including Nobel Prize-winning Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich and Philippe Besson, the French laureate of the Emmanuel Robles Prize.

The full program of the can be viewed here.