Giorgi Kekelidze is an award-winning Georgian poet, novelist, radio and television presenter, and Director General of the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia. His poetry collection The Odes (Siesta, 2008) was recognized in 2009 with Georgia’s most prestigious literary award, the Saba Prize, and his first fiction book, Gurian Diaries (Siesta, 2014), with the Guram Rcheulishvili Award in 2015, which was the bestselling work of literature nationally in the year of its publication. In addition to his numerous award-winning books, which have been translated into English, German, Italian, Chinese, Ukrainian, Russian, and Azerbaijani, Giorgi has also been recognized for his pioneering work leading the digitalization of Georgia’s national archives as well as for establishing the Lib-Equilibrium charitable foundation, which focuses on providing social and educational activities for students.

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Maia Simonishvili is a graduate of Tbilisi State University, where she studied Philology and Cultural Resource Management. For over ten years she worked as a newspaper and radio journalist, both in her native Georgia and in Germany, where she was a fellow at the Foundation of Lower Saxony and an intern at the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. She currently works as a curator of the Anglo-American Reading Hall of the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia and collaborates with the National Foundation of Georgian Literature to publish translations of Georgian literature in foreign countries.

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