City of Asylum Presents
LitFest 2025
Announcing LitFest 2025! For one packed weekend this October 18 to 19, City of Asylum welcomes a lineup of world-class authors, translators, and performers exploring the theme Rift & Riff through the lenses of translation and social justice. This year’s literary festival asks: When we are faced with a rift—amid societal change, cultural differences, language barriers—how can we riff on that perceived separation and invite connection, collaboration, and conversation?
Fiction | Poetry | Translation | Nonfiction | Book Signings
LitFest 2025 Schedule
October 18 @ 2:30 PM
Books From My Country You Should Know
with Olena Boryshpolets (Ukraine), Bertony Louis (Haiti), Anouar Rahmani (Algeria) & Mukhtar Shehata (Egypt)
What are we missing when we limit the canon to American works? What books from outside of the US should we be putting at the top of our lists?
In this program, City of Asylum Writers-in-Residence Anouar Rahmani, Mukhtar Shehata, Bertony Louis, and Olena Boryshpolets share the books and writers from their home countries—Algeria, Egypt, Haiti, and Ukraine—that all readers should know about. The writers will read excerpts from these iconic works, provide context for why each story is so important in their country, and share how the literary lineage of their home country shows up in their own work.
October 18 @ 3:30 PM
Trans/Nonbinary Ecopoetics in the Garden
with Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Aaron El Sabrout & imogen xtian smith
Poets Aaron El Sabrout, imogen xtian smith, and Julian Talamantez Brolaski take to the Alphabet Reading Garden for a poetic exploration of ecologies. These trans and nonbinary writers will embark on a poetic exploration of their own homes, with special attention to the intricacies of our ecosystems, formed by both the natural world and our more-than-human kin, as well as the people who make up our communities.
October 18 @ 7:00 PM
Bringing the Classics to Today
with MacArthur Genius Anne Carson
Anne Carson is one of the most celebrated classicists of our times. Her translations and essays have transported the texts of Aeschylus and Sophokles through time and space to bring them to today’s modern audiences. This program features staged readings of two of Anne’s works: Cassandra Float Can (based on Aeschylus’s Cassandra) and Antigonick (based on Sophokles’s Antigone).
October 19 @ 1:00 PM
Indigenous Language Acts
with Erin Marie Lynch & Julian Talamantez Brolaski
Indigenous authors Julian Talamantez Brolaski and Erin Marie Lynch explore Indigenous language and ways of languaging in conversation with Eulalia Books founding editor Michelle Gil-Montero. This dynamic discussion will traverse hybrid and experimental poetic forms and translation as a means of both language preservation and play.
October 19 @ 2:30 PM
Bringing Chinese Literature to America
with Editor Han Zhang (Riverhead Books) & Translator Jeremy Tiang
In conversation with Anderson Tepper, this program will feature a discussion with editor Han Zhang and translator Jeremy Tiang on the translation process and the importance of Chinese literature’s presence—indeed, the presence of translated literature at large—in America. The program will focus on Zhang Yueran’s Women, Seated, one of the season’s hottest books.
October 19 @ 7:00 PM
Love & Family, India & America, Tradition & Modernity
with Booker Prize Winner Kiran Desai (“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny”)
In 2006, author Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. For nearly 20 years, the world has been waiting with bated breath for her next novel. Now it’s finally here, it’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, and it’s on the shortlist for the 2025 Booker Prize. Kiran returns to City of Asylum to share this groundbreaking new novel in conversation with Anderson Tepper.
Reading List
Order books by LitFest authors and translators at City of Asylum Bookstore.
LitFest is Made Possible Through the Support of Our Sponsors
