2017-10-30

Autumn Legend 2017 – Improvisation Round in Kakheti

An improvisation round of a student literary competition Autumn Legend 2017 was held in Bakurtsikhe. 10 finalists of the competition were given 12 hours to create new stories on a topic “The Autobiography of Somebody Else” offered by the jury. Autumn Legend is a joint project of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and the company Geocell and it was held for the ninth time already. This year, the final round of Autumn Legend was hosted by European-style hotel “Marosheni” in Bakurtsikhe.

The university jury will reveal three winners out of 10 finalists of the improvisation round and all of them will receive pecuniary prizes from the Tbilisi State University and special awards from the company Geocell. Thus, the winner of the 1st place will receive GEL 1000 and competition symbol; the winners of the second and third places will receive GEL 700 and GEL 500, respectively.  

Deputy Rector of TSU, Mikheil Chkhenkeli said that Autumn Legend is a very interesting project, which is jointly organized by the Tbilisi State University and the company Geocell. The main purpose of the competition is to discover young talents and encourage beginning writers. “This project is extremely important for our university. I would like to wish success to the students participating in the final round. I am confident that being inspired by the most beautiful nature of Kakheti, they will create very interesting works. Next year, Autumn Legend will be held for the tenth time and it will coincide with the 100th anniversary of TSU. So, the anniversaries of both TSU and Autumn Legend will be marked grandly,” Mikheil Chkhenkeli said.

The student literary competition Autumn Legend was launched in 2009. It aims at discovering talented young people and paving their ways for future success. Students from various higher educational institutions accredited in Georgia were eligible to participate. The literary competition was held in two stages. The jury selected 10 finalists out of 427 contestants participating in the first round. The finalists were given 12 hours to create new works during the improvisation round.

“Personally I kept in mind all advices given by the jury members and the winners of previous competitions not to draw up a topic in advance and then to integrate it artificially into the topic voiced by the jury. When the topic of the competition was unveiled, I already knew what to write, to say it bluntly, how to end my story,” Aleksandre Kalmakhelidze, a participant of the competition, said.

The jury consisted of five members: writers Dato Turashvili, Teona Dolenjashvili, Maka Ldokonen, Archil Kikodze and last year’s winner, Beka Beradze.

“If I were a student, it would be very interesting for me to participate in this project. It is a great stimulus, great impetus for those young people, who want to write. Similar support is very important at this age. Therefore, many thanks to those people, who created and implemented this project. Let me wish success to everyone. Not all of them will become winners, but actually literature is the process and those, who write, receive more pleasure from this process rather than from its results. That’s why it is no surprise that so many people are participating,” Dato Turashvili said.

Along with the main competition, all those willing to participate in the competition could join an online literary marathon. With the help of Geocell’s special application, registered contestants created their works on the same topic offered to the finalists. About 300 contestants participated in the online marathon. The winner of the online literary marathon will receive a special gift from the company Geocell.

“It is four years already that an online marathon was added to the competition and it was largely due to the fact that a lot of people wrote to us, willing to participate in the competition although they were not students. I remember that we even had a participant from Kuwait, who sent a story through online application and became the winner. I think, the online marathon is yet another opportunity for those people, who like to write but are not students,” Geocell’s social media manager, Vako Kvachakhia said.  

Awards ceremony will be held at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in November. The stories created by 10 finalists will be published in a special collection and presented to guests as gifts.  





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