Meet the Cities of Asylum Network

Pittsburgh. Detroit. Ithaca. These three ICORN member cities make up the City of Asylum network in the United States. Portland, Oregon, is keen to join. Get to know the founders and leaders of our sister organizations and hear what it’s like to be at the very beginning of the process of offering sanctuary to writers under threat. What are the challenges and triumphs of beginning and maintaining a City of Asylum artist sanctuary?

About the Panelists:

Selina Fillinger is an award-winning, internationally produced playwright and screenwriter. Her feminist farce, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, garnered three Tony nominations and made Selina, at 28, one of the youngest female playwrights ever produced on Broadway. The play remains a bestseller, and American Theatre Magazine has listed it as one of the most produced plays for the last two seasons. Selina has written for theatre, TV, and film since she was 22. While an undergraduate at Northwestern University, Selina received her first professional commission for a play; her work has since been developed at off-Broadway and regional theatres across the country. She has developed TV and film projects with AMC, Freeform, Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, and HBO, and was named to the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Hollywood/Entertainment. Selina is dedicated to dignifying and complicating characters who the American canon has long dismissed.

Annika Bennett is a literary manager, grant writer, and playwright dedicated to advancing the artistic health and vitality of the Pacific Northwest. As a student at Princeton University, she received the Page Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Creative Arts. She served as the Literary Manager of Albatross Theatre Lab and Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle, helping champion new work, up-and-coming writers, and theatrical adaptations of great works of classic and contemporary literature. Annika has also worked in dramaturgy for companies including the Goodman Theatre and Seattle Rep. She spent the last few years as part of a small team overseeing the implementation and administration of the Community Accelerator Grant, a groundbreaking trust-based philanthropy grantmaking program that has distributed $30M in funding to arts and cultural organizations across Washington State.