Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
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ABOVE: Carol Harter and Beverly Rogers. LEFT: Former City of Asylum fellow Er Tai Gao with Toni Morrison at the Black Mountain Institute inaugural lecture in 2006. T wo women sit inside a tidy cottage they've spr uced up in Spa nish Oa ks, pr imed to give a tour. You might think these rather unassuming ladies were preparing to host the next meeting of the neighborhood book club, or perhaps dabbling in a bit of house f lipping. Instead they're building a multimillion-dollar asylum for literary refugees. "People say we're an unlikely pairing, but I think it makes perfect sense," says Carol Harter, who has a PhD in literature and was the longest- serving president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. When Harter held that post, Beverly Rogers, now vice chairman of Intermountain West Communications, was a graduate student studying literature at the university. In 2006, after 11 years as president of UNLV, Harter helped create what is now called the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute, an international literary center for creative writers and scholars. It partners with the university's department of English to bring readings, lectures, and panel discussions to the Las Vegas commu- nity free of charge. Back in 2001, the program City of Asylum was founded in Vegas to provide refuge for writers liv- ing under oppression or the threat of censorship, imprisonment, or assassination, allowing them to practice their craft in the United States. The first such initiative in the US, it was a model for similar programs in Pennsylvania and New York. Writers were hosted for up to two years, during which they received a $60,000 annual stipend, a home, and health insurance. Writers from China, Iran, and Cuba fled to Las Vegas in search of hope and freedom of expression. But a few years ago, fund- ing for City of Asylum dried up and the program ended. So last year Rogers and her husband, Jim, donated $10 million to resurrect it under the aus- pices of the Black Mountain Institute. Among other things, the gift infuses up to $800,000 per year into the institute's budget for the next 15 years, pays for a new library and reading room, and allows the institute to create the Black Mountain Institute Prize for Fiction, a biennial $50,000 competition to be judged by a panel of well-known authors. But more important for writers seeking freedom of expression, the gift provides additional money to purchase homes to be used as safe houses for City of Asylum fellows. On top of it all, Rogers donated the $60,000 inheritance she received from her father to sponsor a fellow under Writers' Rooms BEVERLY ROGERS AND CAROL HARTER HAVE COLLABORATED TO CREATE A SAFE HAVEN FOR WRITERS AND AN INTERNATIONAL ATTRACTION FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THEM. BY JESSICA MOORE PHOTOGRAPHY BY SQUARE SHOOTING (ROGERS AND HARTER); COURTESY OF BLACK MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE CITY OF ASYLUM/UNLV/GERI KODEY (MORRISON) continued on page 50 48 VEGASMAGAZINE.COM SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY