Sampsonia Way

Sampsonia Way, the online magazine, is intended to provide the same shelter for writers and writing as Sampsonia Way, the street lined with writer residences in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Each defends free speech by protecting the people who actually do the writing and speaking. The homes provide shelter for writers; the magazine provides shelter for their work.
Sampsonia Way is an online magazine sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh celebrating literary free expression and supporting persecuted poets and novelists worldwide.
In the summer of 2004, Huang Xiang became the first writer in City of Asylum/Pittsburgh’s exiled writer in residency program. He immediately made his mark on the city, figuratively and literally, by covering the façade of his residency on Sampsonia Way with calligraphies of his poetry. This remarkable artwork, called “House Poem,” became an instant landmark celebrating the freedom to write. Since then, it has attracted thousands of visitors and inspired many poets.
Huang Xiang’s “House Poem” motivated City of Asylum/Pittsburgh to create additional writer-residencies on Sampsonia Way, each a rehabbed single-family home with text-based artworks on the facade. Sampsonia Way (in reality, a long, narrow, hodge-podge of an alley) is now a “public library” of “house publications” that you can read any time just by walking down the street, much like Sampsonia Way Magazine.

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