Gela Chkvanava

Gela Chkvanava was born in 1967, in Sukhumi. After finishing school, he was recruited into the army and assigned to an anti-missile unit in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). After military service Chkvanava returned to Sukhumi and studied philology at Sukhumi University. The armed conflict broke out in Abkhazia when he was still a student. Everything he wrote before the war was abandoned in Sukhumi and destroyed when his house was burnt down. To distract himself from the war, and to gain experience in creative writing, he began work on several stories set in peacetime. His first success was in 2002, in the Pen Marathon literary contest organised by Diogene Publishers. Since then, Gela’s works have been published in Georgia regularly. Russian translations of Chkvanava’s short stories have appeared in St. Petersburg literary magazines, such as Neva and Kreshchatiki. His debut book titled Local Colours won him a SABA Prize in 2005. Gela Chkvanava has won several literary awards and is regarded as one of the best modern Georgian writers.