Dear Friends,
On May 7, just days after returning to City of Asylum as Executive Director, I stood in a packed room at Alphabet City. It was the opening night of the 2026 Jazz Poetry Month festival, and the energy was electric.
More than 200 people had gathered to experience a program featuring saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and poets Rania Mamoun and Volodymyr Rafeyenko, both writers-in-residence at City of Asylum. Throughout the evening, we encountered Sudanese poetry, Ukrainian prose, punk, jazz, and fearless collaborations.
The audience reflected something equally important. The room was filled with neighbors, artists, longtime supporters, first-time attendees, and out-of-town visitors. People from very different backgrounds had come together to listen and connect.
What we were experiencing that evening is something I think of as City of Asylum’s gravitational pull.
At its core, it is the power of place and community to draw people toward one another across differences. It is also something increasingly rare.
In a moment when many institutions and public spaces feel fragmented or transactional, City of Asylum continues to create opportunities for genuine exchange—spaces where people can encounter different perspectives, ask difficult questions, and remain curious about the world around them.
That night, I was reminded of something I have only fully experienced at City of Asylum: the feeling of being home.
By “home,” I don’t simply mean a sense of familiarity or comfort. I mean the feeling that you belong to a community where people are encouraged to engage with generosity and mutual respect.
As many of you know, I was born in Colombia. I have spent much of my life traveling throughout the United States and abroad as an orchestral conductor. Along the way, I have been warmly welcomed in many places and formed meaningful friendships across cultures.
But there is one place where I have felt most fully at home, both figuratively and literally. That place is City of Asylum. And my return as Executive Director this spring has only deepened that feeling.
That sense of belonging is not something created by any one individual or program. It is something we have built together through our interactions, conversations, and shared experiences. It is rooted in one of our foundational values: hospitality.
That value was present from the very beginning, when City of Asylum Co-founders Diane Samuels and Henry Reese welcomed exiled Chinese writer Huang Xiang to a house on Sampsonia Way in 2004. And neighbors in Pittsburgh’s Northside embraced both him and the bold idea that hospitality, creativity, and freedom of expression could transform a single block into a place of refuge and exchange.
Over the past 22 years, City of Asylum has grown and evolved in ways that no one could have imagined. Yet that commitment to hospitality remains at the heart of who we are.
Today, on Sampsonia Way, City of Asylum continues to protect writers and artists who have risked everything to continue creating, questioning, and expressing their ideas freely. At Alphabet City, we bring together an even wider range of artists and ideas. Across both, we build community through curiosity, exchange, and the willingness to connect across differences.
Standing at Alphabet City on May 7, the idea of community was not abstract. I could see it in the faces of everyone in the room: the writers, neighbors, musicians, and new and longtime friends listening together. And I was reminded why places like City of Asylum—places that feel like home—matter so deeply and so urgently today.
Thank you for helping make City of Asylum the kind of place people return to, again and again. I am grateful to count myself among them.
Warmly,
Andrés Franco
Executive Director
