born on August 17, 1995, in Batumi. He graduated from the local school and continued studies in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. He was fond of literature from the very early age and felt that her future career would be connected to it but thinking about writing started a little bit late. In 2013 he started his BA studies at Ilia State University, faculty of Literature Studies. The first short story was published in 2014, at the age of 19, for the literary competition „Tsero“ and it gained a great response from the people involved in literature processes in Georgia.Nowadays Abashidze is actively writing blogs for various websites. He was an exclusive blogger of NGO Identoba (the first LGBT NGO in Georgia) in 2015 and wrote about topics such as homophobia, public coming out, bullying, and feminism. Since 2014 Zura is actively involved in social activist life. He often responds the main social issues by his social media page. His stories as well often refer to painful social themes. His short stories and reviews are being published in the various literary publications very often. In 2017 he worked as a journalist in the magazine „Batumelebi“ and wrote articles about the rehabilitation of former prisoners, literature and new editions. Is the finalist of various prestigious literary competition, including the winner of the highest Georgian Literature Award „Saba“ – for the best literary debut of the year „How to Kill Billy Eliot“, which was published in 2016 at the Publishing House „Books in Batumi“.
Zura Abashidze currently works at the Georgian National Public Broadcaster.
Zura says:
“In my country everybody says, that you should be 40 or 50 years old to write something important and big. They all trying to make us think that the best age for a writer is 30-50, to be honest, I’m tired hearing this all the time. I’m a big fan of all kind of Georgian contemporary literature since my teen age, but today I’m more interested in young Georgian authors. Their books are something new for our literature, their voice are something different and their stories are special. I’m little proud that I’m a part of this new generation of young talented people.
It’s hard to talk about me as an interesting author, I don’t see myself as interesting as my readers think I’m, I just have stories to tell, and there is no other solution, when you live in a country where every people has a special story, where almost all the person have problem, it’s very hard to sit and do nothing. I don’t have any special or super power to help these people, my only power is to write their stories. When I was young and had problems, I was always thinking about someone, who would listen to me, I couldn’t find this person, so I’m trying to became one”.