Tbilisi gearing up for year-long status as UNESCO World Book Capital
Tbilisi earned the right to the title with the first nomination of the city by Georgia. Photo via UNESCO.
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Author residency programmes, literary festivals, artistic performances and publisher projects will be on the agenda in Georgia's capital Tbilisi starting next week, with the first details of celebrating the city's year-long status as the 2021 UNESCO World Book Capital are emerging.
Literary agencies, publishers, authors and artists will be coming together to offer readers their works and takes on representing the local legacy of literature, as the status is set to be formally handed over from Kuala Lumpur to the Georgian city on April 23.
Awarded the recognition by the UNESCO in 2019, the nomination for Tbilisi won the right to bear the status with the first try, with related institutions calling the decision "historic" for the country.
With over 100 public events and activities expected to be hosted during the year-long run, the programme has been called a "crucial event" by Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze.
At the centre of the project will be Writers' House of Georgia, the central state institution for the book industry created following the 2019 merger of a former venue of its name with the Georgian National Book Centre.
Director Nata Lomouri revealed to local media in the run-up to next week's handover Writers' House would take a four-pronged approach to marking the World Book Capital title. Museum events, publisher projects, residency opportunities for authors and festivals will form the strategy.
Responding to the programme, publishers of the local scene noted the importance of the status of the city for seeing "direct results" for their industry in reaching new readers.
In other sections of the project, digital professionals have devised an idea of bringing together young readers and children's authors in an innovative fashion.
Organisers of the idea from Geolab - a software programming lab at the Georgian American University - will seek to teach the young students programming, and ask the writers which scenes from their work they would be interested in seeing come alive, leading to a collaborative effort.
In a similar drive to take literary scenes and bring them to a live audience, a group of some of the most notable contemporary artists of the local scene is already working on select passages from Georgian classics.
Involving costume design by Uta Bekaia, music and video by Nika Machaidze, screenwriting by Davit Gabunia and choreography by Natia Chikvaidze, the work is centred around some of the most recognised works of Georgian literature, in an effort to see their characters transformed into the stage art form.
More details on the programme of the World Book Capital celebrations for Tbilisi are expected to emerge with the formal handover of the title next week.
The UNESCO programme Tbilisi World Book Capital for 2021 has started renewing Tbilisi public school library catalogues.
An anniversary edition of the Literary Forum-Dialogue, a celebration of literature hosted by the Tbilisi-based Writers' House of Georgia, will move online in light of complications created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the first time in its history, this year's World Book Day will be marked remotely in Georgia, with organisers preparing everything from book presentations to author talks online.
Director-General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay has named the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, the World Book Capital for the year of 2021, per the recommendation of the World Book Capital Advisory Committee, which met in Switzerland in June 2019. Georgia has called the decision “historic,” noting it will promote Georgian culture and literature, further raising awareness about the country and attract many tourists.
Georgia's capital Tbilisi is about to turn into a hub for book lovers, literary organisations, publishers and bookstores over the next year as the city formally accepted the status of the 2021 UNESCO World Book Capital on Friday.
The new school year will be the theme of the third book fair that will be held on September 18-19 in Dedaena Park, in Tbilisi within the city's year-long status as 'Tbilisi - World Book Capital'. In addition to discounted new or used books, guests at the book fair will find school or university textbooks and stationery. Also, handmade items, souvenirs, board games and more will be available at the flea market.
The Akaki Tsereteli State University Library will host an event called ‘Gifting 100 Books’ within Tbilisi – World Book Capital programme on September 21.
Poets of the post-Soviet literary scene, writers from Western Europe and local names will be hosted in a three-part Tbilisi International Festival of Literature starting this Sunday, with the annual event contributing to the status of Tbilisi as the 2021 UNESCO World Book Capital.
Georgia's capital Tbilisi and the Black Sea coastline city of Batumi are two of the 49 most recent cities to join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, an initiative aiming to stimulate creative industries and showcase cities supporting them.
Visitors to two international book fairs starting this week in Guadalajara, Mexico and Thessaloniki, Greece will for the first time learn about Georgian literature and authors as part of the events, with a selection of writers and literary project managers travelling set to represent the country.
The Georgian capital of Tbilisi handed over the title of UNESCO World Book Capital to the Mexican city of Guadalajara on Monday. Hosted in the latter city on Sunday, the handover ceremony involved Andria Basilaia, the Deputy Mayor of Tbilisi, and Ninia Macharashvili, the Director of Tbilisi’s World Book Capital project that oversaw a range of literary programmes held in the Georgian city over the past year.