Alphabet City

This program has been postponed. It will be rescheduled for a later date this spring or early summer.

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.

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.

Congolese author Alain Mabanckou shares his ghostly reckoning with Congolese history, Dealing With the Dead, in conversation with moderator Anderson Tepper.

“The Atlantic” staff writer George Packer shares his new work of fiction, “The Emergency,” in conversation with writer, critic, and performance poet Adriana E. Ramírez.

In the World Literature premiere of our fall programming season, novelist Carlos Manuel Álvaraz will join moderator Anderson Tepper and translator Natasha Wimmer in a reading and discussion of his thrilling new novel depicting the disintegration that comes from being uprooted.

City of Asylum’s Writer-in-Residence series continues with an exciting preview of Algerian writer and activist Anouar Rahmani’s forthcoming new novel, "The End of the Third World"—a project seven years in the making.

A reading and celebration of short fiction honoring 45 years of the Drue Heinz Prize, one of the most significant short fiction awards in the nation, with current and alumni prizewinners.

2006 Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai returns to City of Asylum to share her triumphant, deeply romantic, newly Booker Prize–shortlisted novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” in conversation with Anderson Tepper.

Zhang Yueran’s translated novel "Women, Seated" has become an undeniable hit among American audiences. But what does it take to bring Chinese literature to the US? In conversation with Anderson Tepper, editor Han Zhang and translator Jeremy Tiang will discuss the translation process and the importance of translated literature in America.

A dynamic discussion that will traverse hybrid and experimental poetic forms as well as the art, broadly speaking, of translation. Moderated by Michelle Gil-Montero.

Anne Carson, one of the most celebrated classicists of our times, will participate in staged readings from her works "Cassandra Float Can" (based on Aeschylus’s "Cassandra") and "Antigonick" (based on Sophokles’s "Antigone").

What are we missing when we limit the literary canon to American works? In this reading and discussion, City of Asylum Writers-in-Residence share the books and writers from their home countries—Algeria, Egypt, Haiti, and Ukraine—that made an impact on their respective literary scenes and that all US readers should add to their lists.

Poet Yona Harvey and scholar Tahira J. Walker explore what it means to be a Black woman living in a city deemed most unlivable for them. The pair will discuss their respective works and the intersection of history, community, marginalization, and resistance. In conversation with Damon Young.