Teona Dolenjashvili was born in 1977 and worked for several years at Georgian Television as a feature director and writer. She began publishing her writing in 2004. Read More Her first book, the short story collection January River, was published in 2005 and was awarded the SABA Prize for the best debut, and her first novel, Memphis, was published in 2009 and won the SABA Prize for best novel. In 2010 her Fidai won the Georgian National Movie Center Prize for best screenplay and was nominated for the Prix Europe in the best radio drama/fiction category. She is also the author of The Real Beings (Bakur Sulakauri, 2014); Escape (SABA, 2013); and Animal Planet (Palitra L, 2011). Her short stories have been translated into German, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Slovak, and Azeri and have been published in various collections. She writes columns on literature for the journal Focus and the newspaper Twenty-Four Hours.