City of Asylum
Giving Voice.
The award-winning author of “If They Come For Us” uses their sophomore collection of meditative poems to pursue the question: Exiled from ancestral homelands, how can one find a place for themself in the world?
Author of National Book Award finalist I Hotel shares a new novel illuminating the lives of laborers, artists, scholars, informants, and activists who, over three generations, defined the Japanese American community post–Pearl Harbor.
Booker Prize–shortlisted author Madeleine Thien discusses her latest work, a “Time” Must-Read Book of the Year.
City of Asylum Writer-in-Residence shares a preview of the forthcoming English translation of his 2022 novel, a multi-generational mystery blending Brazilian, Syrian, Polish-Jewish, and West African Muslim threads, in conversation with the work’s Arabic-to-English translator.
City of Asylum welcomes back longtime friends and partners at Pittsburgh Poetry Collective for a night of poetry competition, audience participation, judge scrutiny, and community connection at the Steel City Poetry Slam.
Our final America at 250 program offers a personal meditation on and tribute to Black single motherhood from “one of the most important feminist writers of the 21st century” (Brittney Cooper).
Strega Prize–winning novelist Andrea Bajani explores the aftermath of an abusive marriage, the son who bore witness to it, and his liberating decision to leave those family connections behind.
Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon, a recipient of the Guatemala National Prize in Literature, presents a novel of memory, violence, connection, estrangement, and the long-term impact of individual and collective trauma.
Pittsburgh-based poet grace (ge) gilbert shares their hybrid form, debut full-length poetry collection exploring the murder of their grandmother in 1976 and the ripple-effect this loss had on their family.
One of America’s foremost poets, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, author of 13 books of poetry and winner of the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, visits Alphabet City, in conversation with the director of Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series.
From the minds of Andrew Swensen and Yan Pang, City of Asylum hosts an expanded showcase of “Shelter,” the story of scars carried from childhood into adulthood, how pain can distort our perception and damage our relationships, and how we find our strength through it.
Prolific author and essayist Jamaica Kincaid shares new PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay–winning collection in conversation with Anderson Tepper.
