City of Asylum
Giving Voice.
Welcome to our ongoing series exploring isolation, exile, and “The Everyday Pandemic.” Throughout this series it is our hope to capture the daily toll of life through the pandemic from the perspective of writers and artists who are familiar with the experience of isolation or exile. With this in mind we’ve collected stories, poems, nonfiction essays, and digital art from writers and artists from all walks of life and from all around the globe. The series is co-sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of English, and the Global Studies Center — and made possible by Pitt’s Engaged Scholarship Design Fellowship.
Photo Essay by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
January 12, 2023
Experience the world through Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo’s eyes as you explore his new photo essay encapsulating the Everyday Pandemic. Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo (born 1971) is a Cuban writer from Havana. Since 2016, he has been studying for a PhD in Comparative Literature at Washington University in Saint Louis, ...
Hospital Music by Roosha
January 10, 2023
The heart monitor blares mechanically, high frequency waves rolling through ear drums, cochlea, and finally colliding with nerves connecting to the brain, embedding a specific neural pattern in the memory forever. Behind lab coat whispers and clipboard conversations, behind the soothing therapeutic voices and informative professional reports, behind the silent, ...
Five Poems by David Dephy
December 7, 2022
STILL LIFE (April 10, 2020) Still entwined. Time passes as time does: so much behind us, a little less to go. No easy ride: peace can be vexing—what we’ve left behind as the sun dips down low. THE OTHER SIDE OF ALONE (August 2, 2021) What if we sense our ...
Three Poems by Kathleen Hellen
December 7, 2022
The incredibly complicated, solitary human being —a pandemic diptych Perhaps she is a student, worrying the degree—here, outside the service bay, beside the lot of shiny, stickered cars. No one near except this woman on a bench, who leaves as I approach, who thinks perhaps that I could kill her ...
On Exiting: Fences & Wires
November 17, 2022
When we acknowledge the enclosures around our social and emotional lives, we get to reimagine a world without limits. When I lived abroad, finding asylum in places like Pittsburgh and Ithaca and in Ottawa, I was repeatedly asked how I felt about exiting my country. And I had to get ...
The Last Mission
November 15, 2022
Illustration by Izumi Miyazaki The eighty-year-old priest Mario waited alone for Marcus in the Windmill Church. It was the second month that the city had been shut down because of COVID, and all the churches were closed. Mario sighed loudly and looked out the window at Wigwam Street. Neither this ...
Poetry by Edward Salem
October 27, 2022
Living in the Promise of the Future I was a futurist, imagining utopian life ahead. Now here I am, I’m halfway dead. I thought scientists would defeat death. Yet here I am, ripping bread with my teeth. In forty years, we won’t need teeth. I’ll be eighty then, close to ...
Two Poems by Vyarka Kozareva
October 26, 2022
DIMENSIONS You can’t know for sure When hope really dies Or if it dies last But only feel That it defers its big plans For an undefined future. And because This future itself Is also in the future Your fingers have learned How to sift every scrap of coincidence Then ...
Symphony in Wellness: Q&A with Raychelle Heath
October 13, 2022
The multidimensional writer shares her journey of self-discovery and holistic health. Photo by Venice Williams. Raychelle Heath is a true polymath: she's a writer and a poet; a podcaster and visual artist; a translator and a teacher; and a yogi and meditation instructor. When she is not writing, you can ...
On Exiting: Assumptions, Presumptions
October 11, 2022
"Where does the home start? Where does it end?" The author explores the notion of exile, home, and (non)belongingness. Illustration by Waad Aljurayyad Nomads are free; exiles are not. So why not claim nomad/hood? For most of my life, I never pictured myself as a settled person. Instead, I romanticized ...
Three Poems by Raychelle Heath
October 11, 2022
A Beginning to a Pandemic Love Story What are the pads of fingers against the broadness of a back, how does one absorb the depth of a freckle, limp into a sea of dark curls without drowning? Hands bloom from the center of a laugh that she has finally opened ...
Three Poems by Anne M. Rashid
September 26, 2022
Kitty Pandemic I name cats after trees: Cedar, Sycamore, and Maple. And Star Wars: Yoda and Obi. And songs: Ziggy and Stardust. And legumes: Sweet Pea and Chickpea. This brood multiplies during the pandemic and now I am truly the crazy cat lady of the neighborhood. My own cat, Ginkgo, ...
She says this tkhine on her child’s first birthday, the world unfolding
September 14, 2022
It’s May: no fallen leaves to herd into interrogatives. Still, the wind searches, calling the names of those it’s driven out. The time between gatherings meanders on the year’s grid, a river forced northward, like a graph that shows the country repeating mistakes in two different centuries. Absence takes the ...
Entrevista a Jorge Olivera Castillo
September 12, 2022
El autor cubano comparte su recorrido como disidente. Este artículo es parte de una colaboración con la revista Pittsburgh Latino Magazine. Jorge Olivera Castillo es un poeta, escritor, editor de televisión, reportero y compositor cubano. En Cuba, fue conocido como disidente y defensor ferviente por la libertad de expresión provocando ...
Four Poems / Cuatro Poemas
September 6, 2022
Totalitarianism. The night when it is eternalaches like a knife woundfreshly sharpenedthe question is knowing (how) to survivewithout the ritual magic of the dawn. Totalitarismo. La noche cuando es eternaduele como una herida de cuchillorecién afiladola cuestión es aprender a sobrevivirsin el mágico ritual del alba. A single blow. I’m ...
In Conversation with Simten Coşar
August 29, 2022
The architect of "The Everyday Pandemic" talks about the complexities of isolation in the pandemic experience. Simten Coşar is the Associate Editor of Sampsonia Way Magazine and is the architect of our newest series "The Everyday Pandemic." She is a former Scholar-at-Risk and a Visiting Professor at the University of ...
Being Nowhere: Stasis and Motion
August 29, 2022
On foreignness, fear, and steel — and how the author experienced exile in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simten Coşar and her dog Dört by the sea. To my father, Ergün Coşar (1934 – 2020) I arrived in Pittsburgh on a cold January evening, after a long sunny ...
An Interview with Jorge Olivera Castillo
The Cuban author shares his journey as a dissident. This story is published in collaboration with our news partner Pittsburgh Latino Magazine. Jorge Olivera Castillo is a Cuban poet, writer, television editor, journalist, and songwriter. In Cuba, he became a known dissident and fervent advocate for freedom of expression — ...
Five Poems by Leah Falk
About the Series: These poems are a part of our ongoing series exploring isolation, exile, and “The Everyday Pandemic.” With the arrival of COVID-19 new realities emerged. Isolation became ubiquitous. Everyday movement suddenly came with great risk. The spaces that once brought order and safety became malleable and uncertain. Throughout ...
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