Reading

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.

Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her novel, Dominicana, was the inaugural book pick for Good Morning America book club and chosen as the 2019/2020 Wordup Uptown Reads. It was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, The Aspen Words Literary Prize, a RUSA Notable book and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. She’s published shorter works in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast and other journals. She's the founder and Editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix)  and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh. She divides her time between Pittsburgh, New York, and Turin.

Award winning author Gary Shteyngart visits City of Asylum in person to read from and discuss his NY Times best-selling novel Our Country Friends. 
In the rolling hills of upstate New York, a group of friends and friends-of-friends gather in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, relationships will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate what matters most. 
The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a Southern flamethrower of an essayist; and a movie star, the Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family.
The novel is elegiac and very, very funny, and Gary’s visit promises to be just as ripe with emotion and laughs. 

Neustadt Prize winning author Dubravka Ugrešić joins us to read from and discuss her newest work "Thank You for Not Reading." A very funny and biting critique of book publishing: agents, subagents, and scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, book fairs that have little to do with books, and authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit, this collection is a perfect examination for modern day readers. In conversation with Nina Herzog from the Los Angeles Review of Books.

This event has been POSTPONED. A new date will be announced as soon as possible.

Pittsburgh Live/Ability: Encounters in Poetry and Prose is a literary collection that reflects the realities of life for Pittsburghers with disabilities. It is the creative culmination of two years of connection and work between 11 multilingual, multiply disabled, and multiply abled Pittsburgh writers and 11 Pittsburghers with disabilities. It is an intimate collaboration recounting what it means to translate oneself into an abled world, and the dynamic and textured diversity of lives pursued in our city. 

Russian poet Dmitry Bykov nearly died in a poisoning, then found himself banned from teaching and pursuing his work as a public figure. Essayist Pwaangulongii Dauod received death threats for writing about queer culture in his native Nigeria. Cartoonist Pedro X. Molina watched as Nicaraguan state forces jailed his colleagues and occupied the offices of the newspaper where he published his work. Novelist Anouar Rahmani was threatened with imprisonment for writing about human rights in Algeria. 
All four were forced to flee their homelands and live in the US Cities of Asylum network (Pittsburgh, Ithaca, and Detroit). Now all four share the stage for the first time, sharing their experiences, their writings, and their commitments to creative freedom of expression. 

In Ukrainian author Mykola Khvylovy's 1924 novel "I am (Romance)," the head of the local Cheka sentences his mother to death in the name of the ideals of the revolution. In 2022, Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine in the name of protecting the “Motherland.” As a result of his ideals, millions of Ukrainians are now displaced. 

5 Ukrainian theater artists, now known as the Slovo Theater Group,  have spent a 5-week residency  in Pittsburgh with playwright Audrey Rose Dégez interpreting Khyvlovy’s work into performance. 

What happens when a town loses its local newspaper?
In Death of the Daily News, author Andrew Conte examines the closure of McKeesport's The Daily News, grapples with the local news deserts that leave citizens with little access to reliable local journalism, and how communities can come together to forge a path forward when their local newspapers shutter.

Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology amplifies and centers LGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives in a collection of contemporary nature poetry. Showcasing over two hundred queer writers from the nineteenth century to today, Queer Nature offers a new context for and expands upon the canon of nature poetry while also offering new lenses through which to view queerness and the natural world.
Artists from the collection join us live at City of Asylum as well as virtually from their homes across the country. 

In-person tickets for this program are SOLD OUT. You can still join us online. 

Sir Mark Rylance is one of the most decorated stage and screen actors in the world, and a favorite of City of Asylum cofounders Henry Reese and Diane Samuels. Mark visits the Alphabet City stage to read selections from City of Asylum writers-in-residence Horacio Castellanos Moya, Huang Xiang, Rama, Osama Alomar, and Tuhin Das—along with one of Rylance's favorite poets Robert Bly.
This is an incredibly special and unique afternoon, just for the City of Asylum community, and we hope you'll join us.