Gvantsa Jobava

Gvantsa Jobava (1986) is the Vice President of the International Publishers Association (IPA) and the past president of Georgian Publishers and Booksellers Association (currently the GPBA board member). She holds the position of the Head of International Affairs and the head of translated Fiction/Nonfiction department at Intelekti Publishing, one of the leading publishing houses in Georgia. In addition, she is a member of Women Publishers’ International Network – PublisHer. In 2020 she joined PEN Georgia.

In 2021-2022 in the frames of UNESCO’s “Tbilisi World Book Capital 2021” project, Gvantsa has founded the first Tbilisi Children Books Festival; Children Books Literary Award NAKADULI; The first Caucasus and Black Sea Basin Countries’ Regional Publishing Conference, etc.

Since 2013, Gvantsa Jobava has been lobbying for the Georgian publishing industry, advocating Georgian publishers’ interests and rights, standing for copyright and freedom to Publish and Freedom of Expression in Georgia. She has managed a number of projects to promote Georgian publishing and literary industry at international level, including Georgia’s “Guest of Honour” publishing program at the 2018 Frankfurt Book Fair. In 2017 and 2018, she organized Georgian writers’ and publishers’ peaceful performances – ‘STOP RUSSIA’ against Russian occupation, at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

 

In 2016 she founded World Read Aloud Day in Georgia, as well as the special award “Book Supporter of the Year”.

In 2017 she organized Nobel Prize Winner, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich’s visit to Georgia. In 2013-2022 she was the organizer of Tbilisi International Book Festival.

 

Gvantsa Jobava is a poet and the translator of works of John Steinbeck, Chinua Achebe, Saul Bellow, John Lennon and others. She has also translated Anna Politkovskaya’s book “Putin’s Russia” and “A Message from Ukraine” by Volodymyr Zelensky into Georgian. She is the author and editor of the publishing project “Banned Books Shelf” and the founder of Banned Books Week celebrations in Georgia.