People
Our team brings together writers, artists, and academics from Detroit. Together, we’re participating in a dynamic conversation about how to support creative work that supports our community.
Laura Kraftowitz’s work has been profiled widely, including on NPR, Voice of America, Salon, Haaretz, The Detroit News, The National and elsewhere. Her essays appear in The Kenyon Review, Protean, Evergreen Review, and The Forward, among other publications. She is a winner of the 2025 Gilda Award. Her first leadership role was as a coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement, using nonviolent civil disobedience 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.
Sofia Farah | Board Member
Sofia is the Development Director of Mondoweiss, an independent media organization focused on providing news and analysis about Palestine and U.S foreign politics. Previously she was the Executive Director of the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine. Sofia has a long history working with nonprofits and Palestine solidarity organizations, including in her home country Chile. Sofia is passionate about building stronger, equitable and inclusive communities locally and globally.
Mary Fuller | Board Member
Mary Fuller is a Senior 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.
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.
