Pat Hart and Marc Nieson’s Free Association Reading Series is BACK for 2026, and we are excited to welcome regional writers to celebrate 10 years of readings.

It’s time to celebrate the Youth Poet Laureate 2025–2026 cohort at City of Asylum’s annual commencement reading! Welcome Youth Poet Laureate Ivy Smith and Youth Poet Ambassadors Vanshika Jain, Monroe Law, Ashley Shim, and Lillia Strickland as they share new social justice–themed works.

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.

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.

Pat Hart and Marc Nieson’s Free Association Reading Series continues this April with four regional writers sharing new and in-progress works.

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.