Dr. Harter took the helm at Black Mountain in 2006 to direct the institute’s growth into the chief outlet for literary arts programming in southern Nevada. She has secured over $3.5 million in gifts and pledges for BMI's programs and activities. During her tenure as executive director, BMI has recruited over thirty-five notable writers and public intellectuals to the Readings & Panels series, created the Bennett Fellows program, expanded the City of Asylum and Rainmaker Translations programs, and relaunched Witness.

Dr. Harter was UNLV’s seventh and longest-serving president (1995-2006), overseeing the creation of more than 100 new degree programs and five new professional schools. She was instrumental in raising more than $550 million, quadrupling the university's external research funding, and initiating the construction of seventeen new buildings. Prior to her arrival at UNLV, she served as president of SUNY Geneseo for six years and spent almost nineteen years at Ohio University, where she was a faculty member, ombudsman, and served in two vice presidential roles. She holds a Ph.D. in literature from SUNY Binghamton and has co-authored books about John Irving and E.L. Doctorow.

Richard Wiley is author of the novels Soldiers In Hiding (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for best American fiction and reissued in 2007 by Hawthorne Books), Fools' Gold, Festival for Three Thousand Maidens, Indigo, and Ahmed's Revenge. His most recent novel, Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show, was published by the new Michener Series at the University of Texas Press in 2007. Wiley has been a member of the UNLV English Department faculty since 1989.

Amber Withycombe is former deputy director of the International Institute of Modern Letters, a literary arts advocacy organization whose programs, including Witness, Rainmaker Translations, and City of Asylum Las Vegas, were absorbed by BMI in 2006. In addition to editing Witness, she manages BMI’s budget, marketing, and administrative affairs. She previously worked as an art director and a graphic design instructor in San Francisco before earning an MFA from the University of Iowa. There, she was managing editor of The Iowa Review and a graphic designer for the Office of University Relations.

Maritza White is a former executive assistant with 7-Eleven Corporation, Mid Pacific Division/Las Vegas. She has also held various civil service positions with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme, California, including executive office manager for the Office of Corporate Business, secretary for the Theater Air Defense Logistics Department, and secretary for the Fleet Liaison and Veterinary Services offices. She holds an AA in Business Administration.

Maile Chapman received her MFA from Syracuse University, where she was a University and Creative Writing Fellow. She then spent a year in Finland as a Fulbright grantee. Her fiction has appeared in U.S. journals and anthologies such as A Public Space, Best New American Voices, Denver Quarterly, 5_trope, and Boston Review, and her novel, Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto, is forthcoming in April 2010 from Graywolf. She is a Schaeffer Fellow at UNLV and edits fiction for Witness.

Matt Swetnam, a fiction writer, has lived and traveled in the Middle East, Latin America, and Western Europe. Born in Las Vegas, he has studied at Oxford University and undertaken historical research projects in Spain and Italy. He received a BA from Brown University and is now a student in the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His fiction has appeared in The Portland Review and DIAGRAM and he is the deputy editor of Witness.