City of Asylum’s annual Jazz Poetry Concert 2006, held on Sampsonia Way, and featuring special guestL: Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka.

City of Asylum provides sanctuary to writers who are exiled and under threat of persecution, so they can write freely. For two years or more, the program provides a home on Sampsonia Way, a stipend, medical benefits, and help in transitioning to stable independence while in exile. Our program is effective: Each writer hosted by City of Asylum has created a full-length work while in residence, and has been able to continue to write and publish.

City of Asylum practices Creative Placemaking, which places arts and artists at the center of a community. We offer a broad range of free literary and art-based programs in our community to encourage cultural exchange; in 2015, we plan to open Alphabet City , a multi-use facility for arts-based programs that will include a bookstore and restaurant. Our publishing arm, Sampsonia Way, publishes English translations of books by exiled writers, anthologies of contemporary writing from places where free speech is under threat, and Sampsonia Way Magazine, an online journal for literature, free speech, and social justice.

 
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