A Special Message from Catherine Skolnicki

Dear Friends,

For those of you who don’t yet know me, I’ve been City of Asylum’s Residency Manager for 10 months, since July 2022.

My role is to be alongside the writers—providing holistic support tailored to each writer’s health and wellbeing, professional development, and creativity, along with social, cultural, and community integration.

Previously I worked as a case manager for refugees, helping families find community and become self-sufficient. I also worked in Haiti and Brazil and have other experience—like developing an English-language curriculum and professionally producing film and musical events—all helpful to what I do at City of Asylum.

It has been an honor and privilege to work with the many writers-in-residence on Sampsonia Way and to engage with them in the community. I have found it tremendously engaging for the heart and the mind, and at times intense.

Intense, because the core of my work is the humbling process of accessing my own and each other’s humanity, when dealing with institutional and (un)conscious barriers that the writers sometimes face. At times, it feels like years compressed into only 10 months.

When in March I attended the annual conference of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) in Brussels, Belgium, I met residency co-ordinators from 80 cities around the world….and I discovered that my experiences were shared.

We talked together informally, participated in panels and seminars, and exchanged ideas and resources. In a workshop, I presented City of Asylum’s unique community-based writer-support model. And I left the conference re-grounded.

One of my most memorable takeaways from the conference came from a presentation by a former exiled writer-in-residence, who is now an ICORN staff member in Stavanger, Norway. From his dual experiences, he was able to explain and distill the challenges of both an exiled writer and a residency manager like myself:

• Exiled writers: By the time writers arrive in an ICORN city, they have exhausted all other options for their families’ safety and security. Exile is a last resort. Two or three years of residency in exile can seem both too short and too long.

Too short, because it often takes longer to secure long-term safety and restore a career as a writer. Too long, because the shock of exile and the cultural adjust-ments can make the two or three years of residency feel like a second childhood.

• Residency managers: The intensity I felt is not surprising. We are working with the human condition and complicated processes: governmental, legal, social, and economic. It is not a job for the faint of heart. But at the same time, much joy can arise in the process when humanity is met with humanity.
• Both: We engage communities in an exchange of support, education, and care.

The word “exchange” may seem surprising. But like Pittsburgh, the other ICORN cities have also found that hosting a writer builds community in many and often unexpected ways—that we get as much from the writers as they do from us. Connecting with others is a need we all share, and the benefits flow in both directions.   

I have witnessed many joyful and illuminating encounters of writers-in-residence with audiences at Alphabet City. In addition, over the past year the writers have collectively made over 37 appearances—at schools, universities, and cultural programs around town and regionally. And they have completed 6 new books—essays, a novel, and poetry,and short story collections—several already published and with more in progress.

A few personal highlights from my first 10 months at City of Asylum:

• Jorge Olivera Castillo and Nancy Alfaya Hernandez participated in a 4-day residency at Dickinson College, where they presented their literary and activism work in both classrooms and in a large public lecture hall.
• Anouar Rahmani was invited to Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he visited politics and gender studies classes and gave an inspiring public lecture about his life and work.
• Rania Mamoun joyfully shed her pen name, RaMa, in a reading at Alphabet City, celebrating the publication of Something Evergreen Called Life, her collection of poetry written during the pandemic.
• Last summer I helped City of Asylum launch our fellowships for 3 Ukrainian writers displaced by war. Finally, after months and months of bureaucratic hurdles and snafus, two of the invited writers have made it to Pittsburgh and the third is expected very soon.

As you can see, it has been a busy first year for me. And during it, I have made many new friends. I look forward to continuing to meet you and many new friends of City of Asylum over the coming months.

Thank you for your support and engagement. From first-hand experience, I assure you that it makes a real difference.

Sincerely,