Each year we gather at Alphabet City to honor an international writer or artist who has overcome efforts to limit their creative freedom. This year we honor Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.
An advocate for freedom of expression, Mr. Pamuk has experienced first-hand the dangers to writers. In 2021, he was investigated by the Turkish state for “insulting” the founder of modern Turkey and ridiculing the Turkish flag in his new novel, Nights of Plague. Mr. Pamuk faced similar claims before. In 2005, he was indicted for “insulting Turkishness” after stating that “thirty-thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands.”

Yiyun Li is the author of ten books, including Where Reasons End (Winner, PEN/Jean Stein Book Award) and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Winner, Guardian First Book Award). Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and her honors and awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Windham Campbell Prize, and more. In 2022, Yiyun was named as the director of Princeton University’s Program in Creative Writing and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In-person tickets for this program are SOLD OUT. You can still join us online. Having delighted the City of Asylum community with readings in 2019 and 2020, prize-winning poet and essayist Ross Gay returns to our stage to share his newly released collection of essays, Inciting Joy. In conversation with Damon Young.

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.
November's theme is : TBD

Writer, theatre professor, and Northsider Kathleen George makes her City of Asylum debut to celebrate the launch of her new novel, Mirth.
Kathleen George is the author of ten novels: a series of thrillers set in Pittsburgh; a novel about the Johnstown Flood, The Johnstown Girls; a novel about Lena Horne and jazz, The Blues Walked In; and most recently, Mirth. Kathy has also written a collection of short stories (The Man in the Buick), edited a collection of short fiction (Pittsburgh Noir), and contributed to many scholarly theatrical books and articles. She is a professor of theatre and writing at the University of Pittsburgh.