People
Our team brings together writers, artists, activists, and academics from Detroit. Together, we’re participating in a dynamic conversation about how to support creative work that supports our community.
Laura Kraftowitz | Founding Co-Director
Laura Kraftowitz’s essays appear or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Protean, Evergreen Review, and elsewhere. She was the Campaign Coordinator of Right to Enter, a translator for the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, and a coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement, using nonviolent direct action to oppose military occupation in Gaza.
Edward Salem | Founding Co-Director
Edward Salem is the author of Monk Fruit (Nightboat, 2025) and Intifadas (Sarabande, 2026), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, selected by Hanif Abdurraqib, and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His fiction can be found in Granta and BOMB. Born in Detroit to Palestinian parents, he was an artist throughout his thirties, working in performance, street interventions, and experimental film. His work has been exhibited at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, The Hangar in Beirut, and many other venues.
Sabrina Balgamwalla | Board Member
Sabrina Balgamwalla is an advocate, teacher, and co-operator based in Detroit, Michigan. Since 2017, she has directed the Asylum & Immigration Law Clinic at Wayne State Law School. She writes about immigration policy through the lenses of intersectional feminism and political economy, and she is currently researching the history of cooperatives in Detroit. She is a proud Member-Owner of Book Suey, a co-op bookstore in Hamtramck.
Mary Fuller | Board Member
Mary Fuller is a Commercial Director for Microsoft’s Healthcare and Life Sciences Enterprise Operating Unit. Previously, she managed a sales and support team co-located in Brooklyn and Jaipur at SmartSign. She holds a BA from Smith College and an MBA from Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. She lives between Detroit and Brooklyn, and enjoys music, collecting art, independent cinema, reading, and traveling in her spare time.
Donovan Hohn | Board Member
Donovan Hohn is the author of Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea, a New York Times Notable Book and runner-up for both the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the PEN/E O Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His essays have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Best Creative Nonfiction. A recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, Hohn teaches nonfiction at Wayne State University in Detroit. His second book, The Inner Coast: Essays, was published by W. W. Norton in 2020.
Robert Laidler | Assistant Program Manager
Robert Laidler is an African American poet who was born in Detroit. He is the recipient of three Hopwood Awards, including a Meader Family Award for poetry manuscripts and a Theodore Roethke Award for long poems. He was the inaugural Daniel Keyes Fellow in poetry and Wayne State University and holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. At City of Asylum/Detroit, he is developing public programs that approach exile from a broad lens and bring our local community into our global mission.
Sara Dassanayake | Assistant Program Manager
Sara Dassanayake is an MA candidate in English Literature at Wayne State University, where she also studied psychology and Russian. A Russian Scholar Laureate, she strongly believes in using foreign language education to teach students how to build community and advocate for positive social change. Her research explores literary representations of intergenerational trauma and family languages of traumatic inheritance. At City of Asylum/Detroit, she is developing best practices for building a flexible and supportive community around our fellows.
“The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.”
— Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Laureate and former resident of the Gothenburg City of Refuge, exiled for her criticism of the Belarusian regime
Creative Writing Internship
Creative writing students at Wayne State University connect our grassroots efforts to Detroit’s academic life. Our internship provides professional development and networking for students who aspire to a literary career.
Jasmine Pruitt
Jasmine Pruitt received her MA in creative writing from Wayne State University. Her work has been published in several anthologies. She hopes to one day work for a publishing company dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices.
Elsa Nilaj
Elsa Nilaj is a graduate of Wayne State University’s creative writing program. She is also a filmmaker and the founder of CreateCreatives, bringing to life student visions by supplying the tools and connections that can make their projects flourish.
Emily Podwoiski
Emily Podwoiski practices “écriture féminine” by placing women at the heart of her narratives. Born and raised in Metro Detroit, Emily holds her BFA in English from University of Michigan-Dearborn. She is currently earning her MA in Creative Writing at Wayne State University. In 2020, her essays received the Tompkins Nonfiction Award. Along with studying literature, Emily works as an Assistant Honors Program Coordinator and Amnesty International Faculty Advisor at Schoolcraft College.
Megan Alexandra Jones
Megan Alexandra Jones is a graduate student in Creative Writing and Rhetoric at Wayne State University, where she is a Daniel Keyes poet. While earning her BA at Oakland University, she taught creative writing to youth at the Baldwin Center in Pontiac. Megan’s poetry is lyric in nature and preoccupied with the imposition of the exterior upon the interior, and her scholarly work is concerned with equitable opportunity for success in writing classes.