Free Public Reading May 5: Rebecca Harrison, Jean Johnson, Amy Temple Harper, Jillian Starr. May 5, 2010

Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of readings, performances and wine-tasting at the Blackbird Wine Shop, 4323 NE Fremont, 7-9pm. This show is 21 and over. Contact Julie Mae Madsen at [email protected] for more information.

The readers for May 5 are Rebecca Harrison, Jean Johnson, Amy Temple Harper, Jillian Starr.

Rebecca Harrison was born and raised in Oregon. She spends time traveling around the world writing and working. Her first published book, Child Abuse: A Guide For Professionals, was published in 1983. Her academic credits include an M.S. in Education from Portland State University. Harrison now works and writes, while living with her husband, in Oregon.

Portland’s Jean Johnson is a food historian turned cookbook writer (simple, healthy, thrifty, green). After the Sixties, Johnson spent 10 years in the Southwest on the Hopi and Navajo reservations. She’s never looked back and questions the measured approach to cooking adopted by Americans in the 1890s. More, she wonders why we’ve accepted it so uncritically as a society. Michael Pollan may center his hue and cry on Big Food, but Ms. Johnson targets Big Cooking as the real wolf in the hen house. Her work is focused on taking the battle to the SAD master class—as in Standard American Diet.

Jillian Starr is a writer with a writing addiction. Her screenplays place in the top percents of national contests, including the Nicholl Fellowship, and she also writes poetry, short stories and comedic essays. She produces and performs regularly with the Time Out Comedy Show and is co-executive producer of Smam! Productions. For more information check out her website at jillianstarr.com

Up Next for June 2nd: Matt Love, Cheryl Strayed and Brian Free.