The Tbilisi International Literature Festival marks its tenth edition this year, unfolding in an unprecedented and challenging context. For almost a year, many writers and readers in Georgia have stood in open opposition to an authoritarian regime. Today, the country counts around sixty political prisoners, including poet Zviad Ratiani and journalist Mzia Amaghlobeli.

The 2025 festival theme – Pen Against Silence – speaks directly to the realities of contemporary Georgia. It explores silence as a metaphor for acquiescence to forces that suppress, restrict, and destroy free thought; silence as fear in the face of repression, censorship, and violence; silence as conformity and self-censorship; and silence as the refusal to fight, to stand in solidarity, and to defend the oppressed.

Yet the theme reaches beyond censorship and political repression. It confronts other forms of silencing: the erasure of historical memory, the distortion of cultural identity, the suppression of critical thinking, and the dismantling of diversity. The pen – a timeless symbol of resistance through words – stands here as literature’s uncompromising answer to such enforced quiet.

Founded in 2015 at the Writer’s House, the Tbilisi International Literature Festival has become an essential part of Georgia’s cultural landscape and a unique event in the Caucasus. It fosters a vibrant exchange of ideas, nurtures cultural diversity, and positions Tbilisi as a regional literary hub. Each year, the festival hosts thematic discussions, book presentations, and encounters with Georgian and international authors, literary scholars, translators, and performers, offering audiences direct access to contemporary literary currents.

Over the past nine years, the festival has welcomed nearly 200 authors from more than 40 countries and staged over 300 cultural and educational events.

The past two years, however, have brought severe challenges. Political developments have inflicted lasting damage on the cultural sphere, with public institutions closing their doors to independent writers and artists. In 2024, the festival was organized under the auspices of PEN Georgia – an advocate for freedom of expression and the rights of writers, journalists, and artists. This marked the start of a new chapter: staged without state involvement, in alternative spaces, yet with undiminished spirit.

For the organizers, the 10th edition represents an urgent opportunity to amplify a voice of protest – within Georgia and beyond its borders. We hope this milestone festival will be remembered as a bold, inspiring moment in Georgia’s literary history, and as part of the nation’s continuing struggle for freedom.