An improvisation round of a student literary competition Autumn Legend and an awards ceremony was held in Kakheti on October 25-26. The jury revealed three winners. The best work was created by Ketevan Meparidze, a student from Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA); Nino Modebadze and Tamta Kamushadze from the Tbilisi State University became the winners of the second and third places. All the three winners received pecuniary prizes at GEL 1000, GEL 700 and GEL 500, respectively, from the Tbilisi State University. Moreover, the company Geocell handed over special gifts to the winners.
“It was the most interesting competition in my life. I had to write a story within 12 hours. I was very skeptical about it. I was sure that I could not cope with it, but the jury members gave us such items that one could write a lot of things about them. I rewrote my work many times, changed it and read it many times. Finally, I thought that it was not even worth submitting it, but ultimately I plucked up courage and submitted it. Now I am happy that I did not lose this opportunity,” Ketevan Meparidze, the winner of the competition, said.
The student literary competition August Legend – a joint project of the Tbilisi State University and the company Geocell – was held for already the sixth time in 2014. During six years the organizers of the competition offer the beginning writers to try their forces in improvisation round, where a comfortable environment is created to shift invented characters to paper. This year the Training Center of Justice in Kvareli hosted the competition. 10 finalists participated in the improvisation round. They had 12 hours to create new works on the topic offered by the jury. The jury consisted of the following members: writers Dato Turashvili, Teona Dolenjashvili, Maka Ldokonen, Basa Janikashvili, literary critic Levan Gigineishvili and last year’ winner Beka Adamashvili.
The jury provided contestants with different items as a topic for their works; six members selected one item each, including a suitcase, voice recorder, tickets for cultural event, pills, key and water gun.
“It is a great undertaking, when students are getting involved in such event. Nobody knows how many authors Georgian literature will have in future, but I would like all of those young people, who participated in the competition, to join Georgian literature. Some names were really interesting for me; some texts were quite original, though they need certain improvement; but it does not mean that we should not think about new ideas and new forms. I wondered most of all what young people were writing about, because modern literature is a mixture of many forms and many new ideas,” jury member Basa Janikashvili said.
Besides Tbilisi, students from various regional higher educational institutions also participated in the competition. 268 contestants from 20 various higher educational institutions, including from Batumi, Kutaisi, Gori and Samtskhe-Javakheti state universities, participated in the first round.
“The key goal of the competition is to present new generation to modern Georgian literature. We try to develop the competition from year to year, to introduce novelties and innovatory approaches; several literary seminars were planned this year, which promoted better understanding of writing and literary devices; we plan to intensify our work in this direction and offer more lectures and seminars to our finalists from the next year,” TSU Project Manager Nino Kalandia said.
Along with increasing its scales, Autumn Legend further expands its area. All those willing to participate in the competition could join online marathon ongoing in parallel with the improvisation round.
“400 persons participated in the marathon this year. A winner will be revealed on November 10 and the company Geocell will present a special prize. I hope that we will have quite interesting works,” Tako Rodonaia of the company Geocell said.
Media coverage is provided by Liberali magazine and online publication, which has already published the winner’s work Island Koene.
