Salome Benidze is a poet, writer, blogger and translator. Her poetry has received many prestigious awards and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Born in 1986 in Kutaisi, Salome grew up during the turbulent decade of the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and many new countries emerged from its ruins. In Georgia these years were marked by civil war, a downturn in the economy, widespread corruption and rampant crime. As a consequence, a great number of people were forced to emigrate in order to earn their living. The majority of these migrants were women, many of whom had to leave their young children with relatives and live in exile from their homeland, often working abroad for decades in order to provide for their families.
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