Led by storyteller Cassandra Sagan, Maggid-Educator. OJMCHE’s popular story telling series returns. In the first evening Cassandra will be working with community members to polish and share their stories on the theme of Identity. And the audience will also have the opportunity to share in an open mic segment.
Dylan Burdette is a nonbinary writer, musician, and student with a penchant for self-love. They are currently finishing up their senior year, getting two Bachelors of Science in English and Psychology at Portland State University. In their free time they can often be found volunteering (for anything from nature conservation to transgender history) or working on some creative personal project. They enjoy cooking, creating art, and spending time with their loved ones.
Award-winning reporter and novelist Rebecca Clarren has been writing about the American West for more than twenty years for magazines such as The Nation, MotherJones and High Country News. Her novel KICKDOWN, about two sisters and their struggle to save their family’s ranch was shortlisted for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction; Molly Gloss writing for The Washington Post called it an “impressive debut,” and a “moving evocation.” She is currently working on AN AMERICAN INHERITANCE, a book of non-fiction for Penguin Books about her family’s unlikely path to becoming Jewish homesteaders on the South Dakota prairie and their tangled history with the Lakota who were displaced onto reservations in order for her great-grandparent’s to receive “free” land. She lives in Portland with her husband and two young sons.
Tracy Schlapp and Danny Wilson presenting at the Johnny Cash Heritage Festival in Dyess, Arkansas in October 2019. Tracy Schlapp considers herself a word wrangler. As owner/founder of Cumbersome Multiples, a small press and design collective, Schlapp collaborates with writers and artists to produce prints, artists books, and performances. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Mixing optimism with the boldness of age, Danny Wilson learned some chords on the guitar, started writing songs and formed his first band in 2015. A believer in the reinvention that comes with second chances, Wilson finds Johnny Cash’s catalog provides a natural extension to his own sets. He plays with Luther’s Boots in Portland, Oregon.