City of Asylum in Pittsburgh
I learned about an incredibly interesting organization today. It’s called City of Asylum, and it’s a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit; I’m just going to copy their mission directly:
“City of Asylum builds a just community by protecting and celebrating creative free expression. We provide sanctuary to endangered literary writers, so that the writers can continue to write and their voices are not silenced. We offer a broad range of free literary, arts, and humanities programs in a community setting to build social equity through cultural exchange. And by transforming blighted properties into homes for our programs, we anchor neighborhood economic development.”
As my daughter and I wandered around the three buildings that comprise the Mattress Factory — a contemporary art museum on the city’s Northside – I started noticing “City of Asylum” plaques on homes as well as at the entrance to public spaces such as a “reading garden.” Now, back in our hotel, I’m learning that these “decorated houses” are part of the exiled writer-in-residence program, “a long-term residency for literary writers who are in exile from their home countries and under threat of persecution because of their writing.” City of Asylum commissions a public artwork that incorporates a literary text to adorn these homes…and they call this “house publishing.” (So cool!)
The five existing houses on this program include (you can click all the images below to enlarge them):
* Jazz House, created by Than Htay Maung & jazz musician Oliver Lake, who also started the neighborhood’s annual Jazz Poetry Concert;
* House Poem (created by Huang Xiang, the first exiled writer in the City of Asylum program);
* Pittsburgh-Burma House, inhabited by the third exiled writer, Khet Mar of Burma;
* Winged House, which incorporates text by Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka (maybe you’ve heard of his 2021 novel Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth…);
* Fifth House Publication…this one’s getting inaugurated later this month and I’m not sure it has an official name yet. (Edit: It’s now called Comma House!) It’s based on the work of writer-in-residence Tuhin Das, a Bengali writer.
This is all so amazing and fascinating! Check out City of Asylum on Instagram at @cityofasylum or online at cityofasylum.org.
originally published on instagram