First Wednesday Reading Series at Blackbird Wine Shop - November 5: Daniel Shach-Mills, Johnny Wow and Molly Gloss. November 5, 2008

Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of readings, performances and wine-tasting at the Blackbird Wine Shop, 3519 NE 44th off Fremont, 7-9pm. Readers and performers interested in participating should contact Julie Mae Madsen at [email protected] with an expression of interest and sample work.

The readers/performers for November 5 are Daniel Shach-Mills, Johnny Wow and Molly Gloss.

Daniel Skach-Mills was born in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and raised in Portland, Oregon. He holds an undergraduate degree from Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, Oregon, and a graduate degree from St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington.

Daniel Skach-Mills award-winning poetry has appeared in a variety of publications and anthologies, including: The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Century. Sojourners, Open Spaces, and Prayers To Protest: Poems That Center And Bless Us (Pudding House Publications, 1998). His chapbook, Gold: Daniel Skach-Mills’s Greatest Hits, 1990-2000, appeared in 2001 from Pudding House.

In and around Oregon, Daniel Skach-Mills has been a featured reader for events at Looking Glass Bookstore, Marylhurst University, Living Earth Gatherings, KBOO Radio, and The Friends of William Stafford. A psychotherapist and spiritual teacher, he has lived both as a Benedictine and a Trappist monk, and is currently a volunteer docent for The Portland Classical Chinese Garden. Daniel conducts contemplative workshops based on The Tao of Now. He and his partner live in Portland, Oregon.

Dr. JohnnyWow! has long been concerned with the disparities of assigned gender roles and consequent disparities in contemporary society. Filtered through his rather obscure biblical and classical themes, some strikingly provocative and inexplicable images have arisen.

JohnnyWow! has both a BA and MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Washington, acquired in the 60's. Recently he completed a program resulting in the acquisition of a Doctorate in Metaphysics. He spent over 30 years working as an offset printer, a field in which he had little talent and no interest. Now as Dr. JohnnyWow! he is free to explore the themes and issues that have haunted him for decades.

Most of the art works on display are destined to be part of the good doctor's rigorous Creation/Destruction Aesthetic. It may be your last chance to tell him how wonderful the paintings and drawings are. You may speak to the artist and comment on the work. Your humble and silent awe is misplaced in the presence of art. Johnny Wow! guarantees you won't depart without a piece of real art. When you attend an Art show, don't leave without some Art!

Molly Gloss is a fourth-generation Oregonian who lives in Portland.

Her novel The Jump-Off Creek was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction, and a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award. In 1996 Molly was a recipient of a Whiting Writers Award.

The Dazzle of Day was named a New York Times Notable Book and was awarded the PEN Center West Fiction Prize.

Wild Life won the James Tiptree Jr. Award and was chosen as the 2002 selection for "If All Seattle Read the Same Book."

The Hearts of Horses, released in Fall, 2007, is the novel of a young woman breaking horses for several ranchers in Eastern Oregon in the winter of 1917.