ZEG Storytelling Festival kicks off on June 19!

ZEG Storytelling Festival returns for its sixth edition this summer — June 19–21 — uniting storytellers, thinkers, and makers from across disciplines and continents for conversations that challenge assumptions, reshape perspectives, and forge connections that long outlast the weekend. Three days of intimate conversations, thought-provoking panels, film screenings, performances, workshops, walking tours, and more.

Among more than 140 speakers are: Mohamedou Ould Slahi, an engineer who was detained in Guantanamo Bay for 14 years without charge, tortured, barred from the United States and now one of the most important activists alive. Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, but more than that, a thinker whose work on empire, exile and innocence feels more urgent and prescient than ever. Award-winning writer Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah who has built a career out of writing about the one subject African feminist discourse was told to leave alone: sex. Leopoldo López spent years in solitary confinement for organising protests in Venezuela before escaping Maduro’s regime in 2020. Karen Hao, whose book Empire of AI is reshaping how we understand the worlds most powerful technology. David Belt, a maverick developer who turned a century-old Brooklyn Navy Yard warehouse into Newlab and who was named one of New York's 50 most powerful people in tech. Zelda Perkins broke an NDA with Harvey Weinstein and went on to change the law about abusive NDAs in three countries. Michael Barenboim, a violinist whose musicianship and activism coalesce in his work as concertmaster of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, surely one of the most politically-loaded artist projects in the world.

ZEG is not a conference. It's a community. Returning this year: Bao Nguyen, Emmy-nominated filmmaker behind Be Water and The Greatest Night in Pop, whose latest film, The Stringer, investigates the contested authorship of the most iconic photograph of the Vietnam War. Julie Posetti, one of the world’s leading disinformation researchers now directing the Information Integrity Initiative at Maria Ressa's TheNerve. Rachel Corp, CEO of ITN, who went from hitching a ride into war-torn Bosnia as a student freelancer to running one of Britain's most trusted news organisations. Jake Friedman, creative entrepreneur who launched his own record label at 19 and has spent his career connecting music, theatre, and film in ways that remind us why the creative industries still matter. Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker staff writer and one of the great living war correspondents, who has reported from virtually every major conflict of the past four decades. Razia Iqbal, one of the most distinctive voices in global broadcasting who has interviewed everyone from Toni Morrison to Ai Weiwei.

Partners: TBC Concept, UN Women, Tegeta, Volvo, Coca-Cola, AI Collaborative, The European Union, OHCHR, ALTA, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Georgia, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Tbilisi, betsson.sport, Global Technology Hub, Adjara Group, Honore, Fabrika, Arena Sports Bar, Flutter, Georgian Book Association, Chateau Mukhrani, Hendrick’s, TKT.GE

Media Partners: BPN, AT.ge, Georgia Today, OK Magazine, What About Georgia

Tickets available here: https://www.zegfest.com/tickets

Find more info about the festival here: https://www.zegfest.com

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