Welcoming Executive Director: 

Caro Llewellyn

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce that City of Asylum has a new Executive Director:  Caro Llewellyn.

Caro brings us unique expertise on a global scale. If Diane and I had to imagine our dream successor, it would be Caro. 

Caro has curated and run several of the world’s largest literary festivals, along with a wealth of arts management experience. And she has also worked at the intersection of literature, human rights, and community-building.

Caro was first identified as a candidate for Executive Director by our Board Vice Chair, Akhil Sharma. A noted author, Akhil had participated in PEN World Voices when Caro was its director. And in a twist that seems like fiction, Akhil was first introduced to City of Asylum in a 2010 “salon reading” in our home—sponsored by PEN World Voices during Caro’s leadership.

Since 2010, Caro’s stature has grown and grown. Paul LeClerc, President Emeritus of The New York Public Library recently wrote that “there is no one in the world of culture who has the talent, energy, experience, skill, or entrepreneurship that she does.”

Novelist Aleksandar Hemon—who read at City of Asylum last January—recommended Caro’s personal character: She is “an international treasure—a woman of courage, intelligence, enormous capability of friendship …Wherever she is, she makes the place better, warmer and more human.”

In short, as a professional and as a person, Caro is sui generis.

Caro comes to us from Australia with her husband Maurizio Esposito, a chef. She was most recently CEO of the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. The Centre is a key hub for Melbourne’s UNESCO City of Literature and home for ten other literary organizations, including Australian Poetry, Blak & Bright, and PEN Melbourne. Caro designed and delivered ground-breaking literary programming for and by a diverse range of people, while successfully leading the organization through the pandemic and delivering strong organizational and financial results.

When Caro served as director and artistic director of PEN World Voices, she worked closely with Salman Rushdie for five years. She served in the same role at the Festival des Écrivains du Monde in Paris and the Sydney Writers’ Festival, which she doubled in size during her four-year tenure. She was also the Executive Producer for the year-long centennial celebrations of The New York Public Library and for a similar year-long series of events for the New York Review of Books.

Caro’s memoir, Diving into Glass, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. She lives with multiple sclerosis and is a leading advocate for disability rights in the arts.

I look forward to your meeting Caro in the coming days—whether in person or online.

Henry Reese, Co-Founder