City of Asylum @ Alphabet City, located at 40 West North Avenue, is the permanent home for City of Asylum programming and the arts. It promises to be a hub for Pittsburgh’s readers and writers, jazz and small-scale music and performance, and artistic experimentation. It is a home for diverse voices from around the globe – a place where Pittsburgh meets the world and the world meets Pittsburgh. And it is also a home for many partnering artists and organizations in our own community. To view all of the events that are scheduled, visit the City of Asylum @ Alphabet City website.
Autobio(myth)ography and Collaboration: An Interactive Poetry Workshop
Tuesday, January 24 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm
Come to this free interactive poetry workshop facilitated by Lauren Russell, in partnership with the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh. How do we write out of our own lives and experiences, embracing personal mythmaking, associative leaps, and shifting memories to arrive at a “more significant truth” than strict adherence to the facts would allow? And how can collaborative activities that invite others into our stories help us make the transition from life into art? In this two-hour interactive workshop, you will look at a few published poems that push the autobiographical into unforeseen territory, and then you will use individual and collaborative writing activities to embark on your own autobiomythographical writing. This workshop is open to everyone – whether you have been writing poetry for decades or do not consider yourself a writer at all.
