Eka Kevanishvili © Writers’ House of Georgia

Eka Kevanishvili [Georgia]

Eka Kevanishvili was born in Tbilisi in 1979. In 2002, she graduated from the local State University with a master’s degree in international journalism and has since worked as a radio, print, and video reporter. Since 2008, she has worked as a permanent journalist in the Tbilisi office of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, covering domestic politics, social and health issues, human rights, minority issues, to name a few. She has also worked as an investigative journalist for several leading Georgian newspapers, including »Resonance« and »The New Vision«. She was also a presenter and reporter for the »Green Wave« radio station.Eka Kevanishvili is the author of Seven books, including four volumes of poetry, one volume of short stories, and one volume of essays and interviews.The lyrics of Eka Kevanishvili’s first poetry collection »Rumor« (2006) explore a mixture of erotic poetry and rebellion, which is why she was compared to Anne Sexton at the time. Her next collection »Don’t Stand Here« (2010) takes on social issues and war. Here, Eka Kevanishvili’s poetic style, later classified as urban poetry, was clearly formed. »Selling The House« (2013) is a collection of political poems, with feminism also being a theme. Her poetry has been described by critics as contemporary in the best and specific sense of that word, as it is mainly devoted to social issues, gender issues, the modern world, global and private wars.The poetry collection »Evacuation Plan«, a kind of manifesto, was published in 2016. Gathered in it are slogans, rebellion, and calls to action. The poems are not about love and life, but about the indispensability of love and the right to life. Her poetry collections were all nominated for the most important Georgian literary prize SABA, which she was finally awarded for her volume »Selling The House«. She has also won a number of journalism and poetry competitions, participated in various literary festivals and book fairs, such as the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs, the Authors’ Reading Festival in the Czech Republic, the Bursa Literary Festival in Turkey, the Shamrock Literary Festival, and others. She is the member of Versopolis poetry platform.Her poems have been translated into English, German, Russian, Turkish, Italian, Lithuanian, Swedish, Ukrainian, French, Czech, Slovak and Polish. Eka Kevanishvili was a guest lecturer at Radio Liberty’s media school. She trains regional journalists for Georgia. The author lives in Tbilisi.