City of Asylum
Giving Voice.
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 America at 250 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.
THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN POSTPONED WITH THE NEW DATE TO BE DETERMINED.
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.
