Reading

Award winning writers Patrick Rosal and David Wright Faladé join us in virtual conversation to celebrate the launch of their new works, Faladé’s novel Black Cloud Rising and Rosal’s poetry collection The Last Thing.

Cole Arthur Riley is a Pittsburgh raised writer and creator of Black Liturgies (@blackliturgies), daily spiritual reflections on Instagram. Cole joins City of Asylum to read from her debut collection, This Here Flesh, which weaves stories from three generations of her family to discover the “necessary rituals” that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation.

This is a virtual-only event hosted via City of Asylum @ Home. A poetic and raw coming-of-age memoir about Blackness, masculinity, and addiction, Punch Me Up to the Gods is... more →

In person tickets for this event are SOLD OUT but you can still join in virtually!

Storytelling is a tradition that spans across cultures, countries, and centuries. Storytelling traditions span across cultures, countries, and centuries. Stories bring us together to experience joy, wonderment, and intrigue—and they allow us to build deeper empathy and understanding.

Film historian and writer Wil Haygood visits City of Asylum to discuss his newest book “Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World. Wil is joined in conversation by Pittsburgh filmmaker and activist Emmai Alaquiva.

Join the staff writers from Sampsonia Way Magazine for a launch party celebrating the magazine’s new website and its newest series: “The Everyday Pandemic.”

Please note this program is in person only.
A live reading and conversation with translator and poet Yasmine Seale, the first female translator to release The Thousand and One Nights in English. 

In her new book, "Healing," former oncology nurse Theresa Brown vividly chronicles her journey from the mammogram appointment that would change her life to her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. Despite years working in oncology and hospice, Brown is constantly surprised by the lack of compassion she experiences during her treatment. And she can’t help reflecting on her time caring for patients. Did she treat them with the dignity and respect that she now craves? What could she have done to make other people’s suffering even a little bit easier?

The in-person event is sold out! You can still tune in online. 

Join City of Asylum and Story Club Pgh for a new monthly nonfiction storytelling series, mixing the spontaneity of an open mic with the experience of live theater. Organized and hosted by the former producers of The Moth Pittsburgh. 
Every show has both spontaneous tellers and featured performers, all taking the stage to share stories based on a theme.

The Steel City Slam is bringing the city’s top 13 poets together to battle it out at City Of Asylum. This is the poetry show we wait ALL year for! The top 4 scoring poets from this annual GRAND SLAM show will create a team to represent the Steel City in a regional tournament and the Steel City Team plans to bring BRING THE HEAT!  

Each June since 2010, City of Asylum has been home to Cave Canem's annual reading to coincide with the week-long Cave Canem Retreat, their long-standing flagship program.  This year we are thrilled to welcome Cave Canem back in person to read and celebrate, featuring an evening of poetry with 2022 retreat faculty. 

In person tickets are SOLD OUT. You can still join us via livestream.  

Celebrate the global release of What You Need to Know About Me, a powerful new anthology that centers on the immigration narratives of young people between the ages of 11 and 24. 
Edited by Yalie Saweda Kamara, the anthology’s eighty-four young writers share their dreams, hopes, fears, and realities with unrelenting candor, tenderness, and strength. The anthology’s entries challenge perceptions of migration and identity and compel readers to view these stories with open-mindedness and compassion.

Story Club Pgh’s monthly nonfiction storytelling series mixes the spontaneity of an open mic with the experience of live theater. Organized and hosted by the former producers of The Moth Pittsburgh and presented at City of Asylum.
Every show has both spontaneous tellers and featured performers, all taking the stage to share stories based on a theme.
July's theme is : Freedom

Join City of Asylum and Story Club Pittsburgh for a new monthly nonfiction storytelling series, mixing the spontaneity of an open mic with the experience of live theater. Organized and hosted by the former producers of The Moth Pittsburgh. 
Every show has both spontaneous tellers and featured performers, all taking the stage to share stories based on a theme.

A grandfather who was said to move clouds with his mind…his daughter who lost her memory in a childhood accident and began to see and hear the dead…and his daugter’s daughter, Ingrid, who lost her memory in an accident at twenty-three and unlike her mother, returned with no supernatural gifts…  NY Times best selling author Ingrid Rojas Contreras dives into her own family history in her new memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, and explores the meaning of inheritance, healing, and the power of story.
Joined in conversation by Elaine Castillo, whose new collection of essays, How to Read Now, delves into the politics and ethics of reading and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. 

Maud Newton’s ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother’s father, who came of age in Texas during the Great Depression, was said to have married thirteen times and been shot by one of his wives. Her mother’s grandfather killed a man with a hay hook and died in an institution. An ancestor was accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. In her debut book, Ancestor Trouble, Newton uses genealogy—a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry—to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own family and to argue for the transformational possibilities of reclaiming and reckoning with our ancestors. 
In conversation with Geeta Kothari.

Join City of Asylum and fiction writers Amitava Kumar, Kiran Desai, and Suketu Mehta to reflect on Salman’s legacy from his imaginative use of language and joyousness in his fiction, to his belief that writing allows us to cross borders and learn from one another, to his commitment to promoting literature that allows our society to safely grapple with social injustices.
This program is a celebration of Salman Rushdie, the legacy of his literary work and advocacy, and a commitment to the power and necessity of the written word.

This is a virtual-only event
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty--with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight--breathes life into tales of family and community bonds as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family's unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.