As noted last month in CP, not only the National Endowment for the Arts but also the National Endowment for the Humanties is being targeted for complete defunding by the Trump Admistration. And one local nonprofit that stands to lose out if the NEH is cut or cut back is City of Asylum, which shelters writers persecuted in their home countries and provides a year-round slate of free literary readings, concerts and more.

In particular, the news of possible NEH cuts caught City of Asylum in the midst of an effort to raise $100,000 in matching funds. The original deadline was April 2018; however, this past January the group was advised that if it wants to be sure to get the NEH funding, it should raise the matching funds by April 20 — a deadline now just two weeks away.

As of earlier this week, City of Asylum had raised about $65,000 toward that $100,000 goal, including $45,000 from individual donors (the rest was from foundations). The group estimates that to reach that goal, it needs another $10,000 to $15,000 in individual gifts.

Here's a story CP ran in 2004, about City of Asylum's first writer-in-residence, Chinese dissident poet Huang Xiang.

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