City of Asylum
Giving Voice.
In the first World Literature program of the year, Anderson Tepper will be in conversation with Cameroonian author Patrice Nganang to discuss his new memoir, “Scale Boy: An African Childhood.”
Pat Hart and Marc Nieson’s Free Association Reading Series continues this February with four regional writers sharing new and in-progress works.
Award-winning writer and professor Namwali Serpell shares her new work on Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison in this reading and discussion moderated by Anderson Tepper.
Celebrate the launch of Sony Ton-Aime’s debut poetry collection, a masterwork in imagining an alternative future, navigating our present, and finding language for our common past.
Writer-in-Residence Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s latest work comes to life in this staged reading and discussion of “Signals of Being,” a three-act play depicting the tensions of a country at war and the critical bonds formed among community.
City of Asylum Writer-in-Residence and celebrated Haitian poet, Bertony Louis, shares his oeuvre in conversation with fellow Haitian poet Sony Ton-Aime.
Anderson Tepper joins Pulitzer Prize–winning author Cristina Rivera Garza in a reading and discussion of a fictionalized though deeply personal retelling of her grandparents’ journey through the mining towns and cotton fields along the Mexico-US border.
Pat Hart and Marc Nieson’s Free Association Reading Series continues this March with four regional writers sharing new and in-progress works.
Award-winning author of “Chlorine” and Pittsburgh native Jade Song returns to City of Asylum for the launch of her sophomore novel, a macabre and deeply original coming-of-age work navigating the meaning of life and the inevitability of death.
Pat Hart and Marc Nieson’s Free Association Reading Series continues this April with four regional writers sharing new and in-progress works.
Pittsburgh’s top ten poets battle it out on the Alphabet City stage, sharing original work to be scored by selected audience members for a chance to win it all!
Anderson Tepper joins bestselling Algerian author Amara Lakhous as he shares his new psychological thriller, brimming with deceit and intrigue of a criminal investigation in postcolonial Algeria.
Six-time Jazz Poetry Month headliner James Brandon Lewis takes to the stage with his punk-jazz fusion band, the Messthetics, and poets Mark Andryczyk, Rania Mamoun, and Volodymyr Rafeyenko to herald in another month of poetry and improvisational jazz collaboration at City of Asylum.
Jazz Poetry 2026 welcomes Marta Sánchez for a stunning solo-piano album release, with compositions inspired by themes of isolation and solitude, as well as intimate, improvisational poetry collaborations with four City of Asylum Writers-in-Residence.
Innately fusion, this concert and book launch debuts poems by Erika Denae J that have leapt off the page and been adapted into musical compositions, brought to life with a 13-piece band including the likes of Jennifer Orchard, John Shannon, Theron Brown, Denzel Chismar-Oliver, James Johnson III, and more.
It's the paperback release of Damon Young's riotous anthology, featuring work by Hanif Abdurraqib, Mahogany L. Browne, Wyatt Cenac, Kiese Laymon, Deesha Philyaw, Roy Wood Jr., Nicola Yoon, and more.
Ed Simon presents 50 short chapters that are asynchronously organized works of flash criticism, meant to draw connections across time periods, which each celebrate an aspect of an expanded and broader “America.”
English PEN Award winner Rodrigo Hasbún and moderator Anderson Tepper dive into the secrets and shrapnel of a 20-year-old friendship ripped apart in Rodrigo’s new novel.
In a new work as groundbreaking as “Code Girls” and “Hidden Figures,” author Sarah Valentine unearths the true story of Black cryptologists’ critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era.
Widely published nonfiction writer Lucy Schiller shares the bleak reality of aging in the United States—and how it intersects with class, race, disability, and public policy—and the care necessary to mend this rift.
Our On Topic series continues this season with a moderated discussion among free speech experts, who will get into the weeds of current controversies and the role free expression plays in maintaining a democratic government.
Author of PEN Open Book Award–finalist “God Loves Haiti,” Dimitry Elias Léger shares his latest novel, part sports story and part passionate and improbable love story.
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?
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.
