Susan Cohen: “Journeys from There to Here”

There are two ways to watch the program: in-person at our venue Alphabet City or live-streamed online. Please review our Covid-19 safety policies for indoor programs @ Alphabet City.

Journeys From There to Here is a stirring set of essays from leading immigration lawyer Susan Cohen, inviting us to walk alongside her clients as they share incredible journeys coming to America while overcoming unimaginable dangers and often heartbreaking obstacles.

The collection shines a light on the human impact of our broken immigration system while uplifting marginalized voices, laying bare the remarkable realities of staggering hardships and inspiring resilience. All proceeds from the book will be donated to the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project, which provides free legal services to asylum seekers and promotes detained immigrants’ rights.

Susan visits Pittsburgh in-person to read from the collection and is joined by Gazmend Kapllani whose story is prominently featured in Susan’s work.

Featured speakers:

Susan Cohen is a nationally recognized immigration lawyer. As Chair of Mintz’s Immigration Practice, she works with corporate clients to address their immigration challenges. Long active in the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), and the American Bar Association (ABA), Susan often plays an instrumental role in shaping federal and state regulations and other government activity. For example, in 2020 she led a team that represented hundreds of thousands of foreign students in litigation which overturned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s controversial and dangerous COVID-related student visa policy. In 2017 she helped lead a Mintz team that worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and others to obtain a temporary restraining order on the 2017 Travel Ban.

Gazmend Kapllani is an Albanian-born author, journalist, and scholar. He lived in Athens for over twenty years where he was one of the most well-known columnists writing about migrants and minorities in the Greek Press. His work centers on themes of migration and minorities, borders, totalitarianism, and how Balkan history has shaped public and private narratives and memories. He is the author of two collections of poetry in Albanian and four published novels. Since 2012 he has been living in the US, where he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and writer-in-residence at Brown University and Wellesley College. Gazmend Kapllani lives in Chicago, IL, where he directs the Hidai “Eddie” Bregu Program in Albanian Studies.