City of Asylum Presents

LitFest 2024

City of Asylum Presents LitFest 2024! For one weekend from September 28-29, City of Asylum welcomed a lineup of world class authors, translators, and musicians taking the Alphabet City stage to remind us all just how many exciting forms literature can take.

Fiction | Poetry | Memoir | Translation | Nonfiction | Story Hour | True Crime | Musical Collaboration | Book Signings

LitFest 2024 Schedule

September 28 @ 1 PM

Writing Our Own Story: The Art of the Memoir

with Damon Young, Francine Prose, & Abdelrahman ElGendy

How do we write down our own stories? How are our stories interpreted and consumed by the masses? And how do those interpretations make us view our stories differently? Accessible and intimate, memoir is one of the most popular genres among readers today. In this panel, we invite three authors in different stages of memoir writing to consider these questions and share their experiences.

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September 28 @ 3 PM

The Evolution of True Crime Literary Fiction

with Nicola Lagioia

A Crime Reads and World Literature Today Notable book of 2023, Nicola Lagioia’s The City of the Living straddles the genres of true crime and literary fiction, following one of the most vicious and gripping crimes in recent Italian history. Based on months of interviews, court documentation, and correspondence with the killers themselves, the work is not only fast-paced and revelatory, it is also a descent into the dark heart of Rome—a city that is unlivable and yet teeming with life, overrun by rats and wild animals, and plagued by corruption, drugs, and violence. Nicola Lagioia leads us through a maze of betrayed expectations, sexual confusion, inability to grow up, economic grievances, crises of identity—progressively tightening the focus of the analysis to locate the breaking point after which anything is possible.

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September 28 @ 6 PM

Translation Slam

with Ann Goldstein, Michael Moore, Nicola Lagioia, Rania Mamoun, Mayada Ibrahim, & Amani Attia

A translation slam is a head-to-head competition between two translators to see who can produce the better translation of the same source material. The source material is provided to the translators ahead of time, giving the translators the opportunity to really sink their teeth into the text (remember: translation is an artform, a craft best honed with ample time). If you think this means you’ll be missing out on the action, think again. The true battle of wits begins on stage at the slam, when the two translators present and defend their work under the scrutiny of the author, the emcee, and the audience. The two must compare and discuss their strategies and choices until one of them has proven their translation best embodies the author’s voice and is deemed the victor. One text, two translators…who will prevail?

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September 28 @ 8 PM

Transylvanian Folk Songs Meet Jazz Poetry

with Lucian Ban, Mat Maneri, Joy Priest, & the International Writing Program

What’s a festival at City of Asylum without a little collaboration? In this combination concert and reading, not unlike our classic jazz poetry performances, renowned musicians Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri perform tracks from their latest record, Transylvanian Dance, which they will be touring with throughout the U.S. this fall. Included in the set is an improvisational collaboration with Pittsburgh poet Joy Priest and two poets from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

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September 29 @ 12 PM

Drag Queen Story Time

with Akasha L Van-Cartier

Fire up your imagination for a fun and fabulous story hour with Miss Akasha L Van-Cartier! There are plenty of fun picture books to read at City of Asylum Bookstore, and Miss Akasha will share a few of her favorites that focus on themes of kindness, confidence, and embracing self expression.

Story selections will be geared towards kids six and under, but children and families of all ages are welcome to join the fun. And drag queens aren’t the only ones who get to play dress up! Kids are encouraged to wear the clothes that make them feel like royalty too.

September 29 @ 2 PM

Black Poetry in Appalachia

with Frank X Walker

Pittsburgh is the “Paris of Appalachia,” but what does it mean to be an Appalachian writer?

Frank X Walker, a faculty member of Cave Canem and a former Kentucky Poet Laureate, returns to the Alphabet City stage to discuss his work and life as an “Affrilachian” Poet. Frank is the author of the pathbreaking book of poems Affrilachia (2000), a classic of Appalachian and African-American literature. Frank created the word “Affrilachia” to help make visible the experience of African-Americans living in the rural and Appalachian South. The book is widely used in classrooms and is one of the foundational works of the Affrilachian Poets, a community of writers offering fresh ways to think about diversity in the Appalachian region and beyond.

At LitFest, Frank will be sharing poems from his forthcoming book, Load in Nine Times, a stirring new poetry collection in which he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers―including his own ancestors―who enlisted in the Union Army in exchange for emancipation.

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September 29 @ 4 PM

Music & Activism

with Benjamin Barson

In his book Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons, musician and activist Benjamin Barson dives into the birth of jazz, and unearths vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to illuminate the Black Atlantic struggles that informed music-as-world-making from the Haitian Revolution through Reconstruction to the jazz revolution. The work presents a “music history from below,” following musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes, placing emphasis on the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas, and tracing the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation.

This program will bring Ben’s research to life, as he takes the stage with a group of Pittsburgh and New York based musicians to reimagine the music discussed in the book and its resonance in our current moment.

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September 29 @ 6 PM

Pulitzer Prize-Winner Richard Powers

Presenting “Playground”

The final program of City of Asylum’s fourth annual LitFest welcomes Richard Powers, New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment. This program will follow Richard’s magisterial new novel Playground, which has been Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.

Playground is Richard Powers at the height of his skills. Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

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Reading List

Order books by LitFest authors and translators from the City of Asylum Bookstore.

Tours of Sampsonia Way

City of Asylum rehabilitates houses on Pittsburgh’s Northside for use by writers-in-residence, and commissions a public artwork that incorporates a literary text for the façade of each house. City of Asylum calls this process house-publishing.

During LitFest, attendees had the opportunity to take a tour of Sampsonia Way and learn more about these house publications and our Exiled Writer and Artist Residency Program.