Ithaca City of Asylum

Journalist and memoirist Raza Rumi and writer and filmmaker Austin Bunn engaged in a lively conversation about their lives, their creative work, and “the power of imagination as a public good” at the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca on October 2, 2026. The event was part of the series “IMAGINE! Dialogues on the Power of Imagination as a Public Good” in celebration of Ithaca City of Asylum’s 25th anniversary.

The series pairs former ICOA writers- and artists-in-residence with people in Ithaca working in different creative fields.

Raza Rumi was ICOA’s guest writer from 2015 to 2017. A well-known journalist and economist in Pakistan, he was forced to flee after barely surviving an assassination attempt in 2014. While in Ithaca, he taught at Ithaca College and Cornell University and went on to direct the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. He now teaches at Hunter College in New York City.

Austin Bunn, a professor at Cornell, is an award-winning screenwriter, writer, and filmmaker. Jonathan Miller is a former print and radio journalist who serves as co-director of Story House Ithaca and vice chair of the advisory board of Ithaca City of Asylum.

Light & Shadow Puppet Workshop with Arthur Groys
Saturday, May 2, 2026, 2 – 4 pm
Tompkins County Public Library
Borg Warner West Room
For kids 7 & up
Register now to save your spot

Ithaca City of Asylum artist-in-residence Arthur Groys will lead a free workshop at the Tompkins County Public Library on May 2 from 2 to 4 pm. Arthur will introduce participants to the art of shadow theater and demonstrate several puppet-theater techniques. The kids will then create their own shadow puppets and take part in a collective shadow theater performance, which will be presented to parents or guardians at the end of the session.

Space is limited and registration is required. Register here.

Best for children 7 and up. Children will need to be able to use scissors.

Originally from Russia, Arthur Groys has worked as a puppeteer, actor, theater and film director, as well as a drama and arts & crafts instructor. He is currently a Visiting Affiliate Artist at Ithaca College.

Imagine! Pedro X. Molina and Johannes Lehmann
Tuesday, April 28, 6:30 p.m.
BorgWarner Room West, Tompkins County Public Library
Free and open to the public

Nicaraguan cartoonist Pedro X. Molina (winner of the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent, finalist for the 2026 Herblock Prize) and Cornell soil scientist Johannes Lehmann (member of the National Academy of Sciences, co-founder of The Soil Factory) kick off the Imagine! series celebrating the 25th anniversary of Ithaca City of Asylum. Molina and Lehmann are working on a graphic novel together. They will talk about their creative collaboration and what imagination means to them.

Twenty-five years ago, a group of local writers declared Ithaca a place where persecuted writers and artists could safely speak their minds and exercise their imaginations. Since then, our community has welcomed creative and courageous people from China, Iran, Swaziland, Georgia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nicaragua, and Russia for two-year residencies. 

Join Ithaca City of Asylum in this anniversary year for Imagine!, a series of dialogues on the power of imagination as a public good. Each invites a former program participant and a local resident working creatively in another field to share their perspectives on making art, exercising rights, and imagining a better world for all. Ithaca City of Asylum is a project of the Center for Transformative Action. The Imagine! series is co-hosted by Story House Ithaca and The Soil Factory.

Celebrate Ithaca’s 25th anniversary as a refuge for threatened writers and artists with this series of dialogues exploring the power of imagination as a public good.

Twenty-five years ago, a group of local writers declared Ithaca a place where threatened writers and artists could safely speak their minds and exercise their imaginations. Since then, our community has welcomed creative and courageous people from China, Iran, Swaziland, Georgia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nicaragua, and Russia for two-year residencies. 

Join Ithaca City of Asylum in this anniversary year for Imagine!, a series of dialogues on the power of imagination as a public good. Each invites a former program participant and a local resident working creatively in another field to share their perspectives on making art, exercising rights, and imagining a better world for all. Ithaca City of Asylum is a project of the Center for Transformative Action. The Imagine! series is co-hosted by Story House Ithaca and The Soil Factory.

Yi Ping

(24 July 1952 – 30 December 2024)

Yi Ping –– poet, essayist, teacher, and cultural critic –– died of cancer on December 30, 2024, after a brief illness. He is survived by his wife Lin Zhou and son Mao; commemorative services were held in Candor on January 5, 2025, attended by friends and extended family.

Yi Ping (born Li Jianhau in Beijing, China) was the first exiled writer–in-residence of the newly founded Ithaca City of Asylum. He and his family arrived in Ithaca from New York City the week after 9/11. They had come to the U.S. after two stays in Poland when life in Beijing had proved dangerous: Yi Ping had published in a pro-democracy journal that was later banned and sponsored an art exhibition that was soon closed; his participation in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement resulted in his being permanently prohibited from teaching and publishing. (In their teens, Yi Ping and Lin had already survived hard labor in the countryside as part of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.)

During his ICOA residency (2001-03), Yi Ping taught Chinese at Cornell University, participated in ICOA’s annual Voices of Freedom events, and collaborated with Ithaca College professor Jerry Mirskin and students in a poetry translation course. Now able to write freely, Yi Ping published in Chinese language journals and supported dissident Chinese writers. His wife Lin worked in Alumni Affairs and Development at Cornell University, and they eventually bought a house in Newfield, New York, and were happy to make their home in this area. A hardworking craftsman with his hands as well as his words, Yi Ping restored their home as well as several others he brought to life and use again.

Yi Ping’s works include the poetry collections Blue Sunflowers, Drifting Boats, and Thorn Birds; the essay collection, The Fields Behind Tree; and an unfinished epic, The Hunter Hai Li Bu. With writer and Nobel Prize nominee Zheng Yi, in 2001 he co-founded the still-thriving Independent Chinese PEN Center, of which he was an early director and continuing positive contributor.

Kind, gentle, and modest, Yi Ping was a generous friend and warm host, his beautiful and ready smile welcoming everyone. His radiant spirit and work reflected his favorite quote by W. H. Auden on Yeats: “With the farming of a verse / make a vineyard of the curse.”

Two longtime friends and close colleagues of Yi Ping — Zheng Yi and his wife, the journalist Bei Ming — composed a tribute, which Zheng Yi delivered at the memorial service: “Ithaca, the homeland of the Greek hero Odysseus from Homer’s epics, calls for his return across time. Three thousand three hundred years later, Ithaca gave Yi Ping, who had lost his homeland, a warm refuge, allowing him to ‘dwell poetically’ here and pursue the homeland of his soul.”

Another friend said:“A sincere and genuine individual who treated others with heartfelt honesty, Yi Ping was a diligent and humble teacher, as well as a solitary yet resilient poet. While he brought warmth and encouragement to others, he bore the unbearable weight of life deep within himself.”

We’re proud to have been associated with Yi Ping and grateful to have been friends with him and his family. We mourn his passing.

At the family’s request, donations can be made in Yi Ping’s honor to Ithaca City of Asylum, at https://ithacacityofasylum.org/donate/.

Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA) is pleased to welcome Arthur Groys as its ninth resident writer. He is in Ithaca with his family as an Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residence at Ithaca College and ICOA.

Arthur has written for and directed several popular TV and radio shows for children and family audiences in Russia. He has also been an actor, puppeteer, stage director, and acting instructor.

“As a literary artist, I am always making up stories and adventures for my characters, with challenges and obstacles,” he said. “Now my family and I have become characters ourselves. It is not easy! But I am very thankful to everyone who has helped us come and stay here in Ithaca.”

Arthur studied classical Russian drama and puppetry and has written plays for children and teenagers that have been staged in Russia and abroad. He has also written books of comedic and fantastic poetry, sketches, stories, and novels for children and teenagers. Arthur speaks several languages and often performs in English or French.

In 2022, with the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine War and ongoing political turbulence in Russia, he was awarded a prestigious Artist Protection Fund Fellowship, and subsequently fled to Israel, where he was granted the designation of Distinguished Artist. He and his family relocated to Ithaca in April 2024.

An initiative of the Institute of International Education, the Artist Protection Fund (IIE-APF) fills a critical unmet need by protecting threatened artists and placing them at welcoming host institutions in safe countries where they can continue their work and plan their futures. IIE-APF places these artists in safe havens for a full year and provides fellowship funding, mentoring, and inclusion in a comprehensive network of artistic and social support.

Founded in 2001, ICOA provides sanctuary to writers and artists whose works are suppressed, whose lives are threatened, whose cultures are vanishing, or whose languages are endangered. ICOA is an all-volunteer project of the Center for Transformative Action, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization affiliated with Cornell University, and a member of the International Cities of Refuge Network, which joins communities around the world advocating for freedom of expression.

ICOA is supported by individual donations and by generous grants from the Park Foundation, Cornell University, the Crime Victims & Sexual Assault Survivors Fund of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County.