Tbilisi gearing up for year-long status as UNESCO World Book Capital

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.