Kristen Wesloh, a fundraising executive for American Public Media in Minnesota, is the new executive director of City of Aslyum.

The North Side nonprofit houses exiled writers and presents more than 175 free cultural and literary events each year. Authors, poets and musicians appear regularly at Alphabet City, which has a broadcast studio, a bookstore specializing in international literature, and a restaurant, Brugge on North.

Henry Reese, who co-founded the Pittsburgh chapter of City of Asylum with his wife, Diane Samuels, said the board chose Ms. Wesloh, 50, after reviewing 125 applications and interviewing nine candidates from three countries. She starts work March 18 and will manage a staff of 12 people. She plans to live in Shadyside until she can find a home on the North Side..

“Kristen has a keen strategic sense and has held senior roles at nonprofits serving refugees, senior citizens, artists and media audiences,” Mr. Reese said in a prepared statement. “She is a consummate nonprofit professional who is committed to our mission, and we look forward to her leadership of City of Asylum in the next stage of its growth.”

Since 2012, Ms. Wesloh has been director of institutional giving at American Public Media in Minnesota. Among the programs she seeks funding for is “Marketplace,” a radio program about business and finance hosted by Kai Ryssdal. 

She also obtained major funding for Krista Tippett’s weekly radio program, “On Being,” and “In the Dark,” a podcast by investigative journalists. Their reports on Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for murder by the state of Mississippi, propelled Mr. Flowers’ case to be slated for argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Ms. Wesloh learned about City of Asylum when she heard its former associate director, Silvia Duarte, talk about the organization at a convention hosted by the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

“I came home and couldn’t stop talking about it. I was so excited about the mix of literature and media and music and social entrepreneurship,” she recalled in a telephone interview.

She and her husband, Kyle, visited Pittsburgh in 2017 when their daughter, Sloane, enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh.

Ms. Wesloh grew up in Harrisburg and enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, hoping to write music for movies. That’s where she met her husband, a recording engineer. The couple moved to Baltimore, where she wrote grant applications for the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

“I had always been a writer. I just sort of fell into fundraising for the arts. I enjoyed it, and I was good at it. That started my nonprofit career,” Ms. Wesloh said.

When the Weslohs returned to Boston in the 1990s, she worked for Acre Family Child Care, a nonprofit organization that helped immigrant women start child care businesses. She spent six years there and became interim executive director when the founder left. 

“That was where I had my first opportunity to lead a staff of 20 people,” Ms. Wesloh said.

Since 2006, they have lived in Minnesota, where Mr. Wesloh is the executive producer of of NewSignal Studios in Saint Paul.

Marylynne Pitz: mpitz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1648 or on Twitter: @mpitzpg.

First Published: February 27, 2019, 1:30 p.m.