The Light of Unity Festival

Emerging Writers Series

Book Corner's Emerging Writers Series is an entirely FREE series that supports local emerging writers and artists.

The Light of Unity Festival is celebrating the diversity of Philadelphia's artists with poetry, fiction, music, spoken word, creative non-fiction, essay, art, food, and fun! There will be many performers, seasoned and brand new! This event is free and open to the public. You don't want to say you weren't there, so come out and celebrate with us in the City of Brotherly Love!

Saturday, March 29, 2008 from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Book Corner

So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth. -Baha'u'llah

Schedule of Readers and Performers:

All events take place at Book Corner

12:00 to 12:30: Featured Reader: Deborah Kossmann (Poetry/Essay)
12:30 to 12:40: Emerging Performer: Daniel Schall (Spoken Word Poetry)
12:40 to   1:10: Featured Reader: Mel Brake (Poetry)
  1:10 to   1:20: Featured Performers: The Buckles (Music)
  1:20 to   1:50: Featured Reader: Amanda Norris (Poetry/Fiction)
  1:50 to   2:00: Guest Performer: Ian Wolf (Spoken Word Poetry/Music)
  2:00 to   2:20: Featured Reader: Adam Coben (Spoken Word Poetry/Fiction)
  2:20 to   2:30: Guest Reader: Alexander Jorgensen (Poetry)
  2:30 to   2:40: Emerging Performer: Scott Clausen (Music)
  2:40 to   2:50: Emerging Performers: Miracle Brown & Friends (Poetry/Music)
  2:50 to   3:00: Emerging Reader: Steve Mazzeo (Poetry)
  3:00 to   3:30: Featured Performer: Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore (Poetry/Music)
  3:30 to   4:00: Featured Performer: Quincy Scott Jones (Poetry/Music)
  4:00 to   4:15: Featured Performer: Joseph Dorazio (Poetry)
  4:15 to   4:30: Featured Reader: Jeffrey Ethan Lee (Poetry)
  4:30 to   4:45: Guest Performer: Kevyn Johnson (Artistic performance/Comedy)
  4:45 to   5:00: Featured Performer: X Koamane (Music)

Biographies of Readers and Performers:

(in alphabetical order)

Mel Brake was raised in Philadelphia, PA. He graduated with a B.S. degree from West Chester University. He has written poetry as a method of healing, self love, and to express his inner thoughts and feelings. He was a guest speaker on The October Gallery Radio Show, WHAT 1340 AM discussing and reading his work. He was the featured poet with Live Poets Society of Media, PA.; Mad Poets Society of Media, PA; and Poet and Prophets of Swarthmore, PA. Recently, he was a featured poet at Robin's Book Store with Philadelphia Poets. Some of his works appear in the current issue of Philadelphia Poets Journal; Mad Poets Review, Fall 2007; and Fox Chase Review. This coming Spring 2008, he will be featured at the Manayunk Art Center, Philadelphia, PA and will publish his first CD/chapbook, Adoration of the Sol.

Miracle Brown is attending her senior year of high school at Delaware Valley. She has read poetry at Barnes and Noble and performs praise dancing at her church, Our Lady of Hope. She enjoys playing soccer and singing in her church choir. She says, "I am living proof that there is good that comes from the darker side of life [referring to growing up in North Philadelphia]. My struggle has only made me stronger. Intoxicated with the desire to learn, I refuse to be anyone's statistic." She has been accepted into the Psychology program at Bloomsburg University.

Bernie Buckles began singing in 1984 as part of a duo. The group became a trio and stayed together for five years performing a cappella shows around the tri-state area. They rubbed shoulders with a lot of names in the business who were architects of the oldies, such as Kenny Gamble, one of the members of the Delfonics, and many others. His wife, Marsha Buckles, joined the group in 2004. Despite their personal battles with visual impairment and past groups disbanding, The Buckles have emerged for their first duo performance.

Scott Clausen is from the forests of northwestern NJ and is currently living in West Philadelphia. He is a student of literature and music . . . and life (are not we all?). He records his music to tape using lots of archaic machinery, which he has acquired over the years. He calls these sound projects, Earl Duke Benefactor. Do inquire further.

Adam Meora-Coben is the current host of Blam: a poetry/open mic series in East Falls. He recently self-published his book of poems, Slipping Inside Faith. He has recently been published in Mad Poets Review, HinGe Online and OM Shanghai Radiator. He has been featured at Robin's Bookstore, the Tin Angel, Arcadia University, Milkboy and many other venues. He lives with his loving wife, Sonya, in East Falls.

Joseph Dorazio studied anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a docent at Penn's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He currently works as an Executive Assistant for Shire Pharmaceuticals and writes free-verse poetry in his spare time. He is a member of the Mad Poets Society, and hosts an open microphone at Taylor's at the Old Mill, Norristown, on the 4th Thursday of every month. His poetry appears in The Mad Poets Society 2007 Annual Review, and in an upcoming edition of the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Quincy Scott Jones earned a Bachelor's degree from Brown University, a Master's degree in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and $100.00 once working as supermarket clown. He currently writes, teaches, and performs in the Philadelphia area, and is an Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at Arcadia University and an Adjunct Instructor at Temple University. He is the creator and host of New Directions of Black Poetics, a semiannual panel of writers and scholars discussing their relation to the African-American Community and literary tradition. Last year he taught Arcadia University's first ever Poetry on Page and Stage class, a course exploring the possibilities in the relationship between poetry as spoken performance as well as a performance on the page.

Alexander Jorgensen was born and raised of the most mixed and common stock. An incessant traveler, he has lived in the United States, the Czech Republic, the Galapagos Archipelago, India's Himachal Pradesh (in the lap of Himalaya), and the People's Republic of China (where he has divided his time since 2002). His work has appeared in both online and print journals, including One Less, Noon, Otoliths, Shampoo, Big Bridge, and Kabita Pakshik (translations into Bengali by poet and translator, Subhashis Gangopadhyay). "Letters to a Younger Poet," correspondences with the late Robert Creeley, appears in Jacket Magazine #31. Of his first, self-published chapbook, In Deference to Ahab, Robert Creeley wrote: "Here persons seem inside out, often at the painful edge of contact, each moment a tacit particularity of the flesh. The brilliance of the poet reassures us, yet this walk on the wild side is as perilous as ever."

X Koamane embarked on his first musical endeavor in 1999, fusing visual arts with experimental rhythms and tones. He has collaborated with several local underground artists including Sky Blue Vampires, Wayne HSU Band, Necromanic Sunshine, and Radio Aris, applying guitar, world percussions (African and Indian), bass, keyboards, and spontaneous interpretive dance. He formed the band Extacy in 1999 which has performed in various venues including Doc Watson's, Abiline, Coda (New York), Walt Whitman Center, Tritone, and La Tazza (Philadelphia, Boston). In 2007, X Koamane began production for his first solo project. X Koamane is self produced. He uses world percussions, acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, and keyboards. He is promoting his CD, Dementia, which will be available in May of 2008. "Koa is a rare wood found in Hawaii. Wood is a symbol of strength in dream interpretation and many mystical beliefs. Mane represents the presence of the spirit. Together it means strong spirit. X is the inner self of every man. This album is an expression of life through spiritual eyes."

Deborah Derrickson Kossmann won the Short Memoir Competition at the 2007 First Person Arts Festival in Philadelphia. Her essay, "Why We Needed a Prenup with Our Contractor" was published as a "Modern Love" column in The New York Times on October 28, 2007. Her essays have appeared in journals and magazines including Tiferet; A Journal of Spiritual Literature; Psychotherapy Networker; and Families, Systems, & Health. In 2004, Deb received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in Runes: A Review of Poetry; Cape Cod Literary Voice; Iris: A Journal about Women; Conscience - Catholics for a Free Choice; The Mad Poets Review; and Philadelphia Poets. She is currently working on a book of poetry and a humorous collection of essays. Deb is a clinical psychologist in private practice with offices in Langhorne and Havertown, Pennsylvania. She also teaches in the Graduate Counseling Psychology program at Rosemont College.

Jeffrey Ethan Lee has been Poetry Editor since 2005 for Many Mountains Moving Press. Lee's books have been used at LeMoyne College (Syracuse, NY), Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA), The Honors College of Penn State Erie, Ashland University's MFA program (Ashland, OH), and Moravian College (Bethlehem, PA). Lee's poetry book, identity papers, a 2006 Colorado Book Award finalist, is available from Ghost Road Press. (Visit identitypapers.org for samples, free audio, video, student responses, etc.) His first full-length poetry book, invisible sister, was published by Many Mountains Moving Press (2004). (Visit mmminc.org and click the MMM Press link for samples, audio, reviews, interviews, etc.) Lee won the 2002 Sow's Ear Poetry Chapbook prize for The Sylf (2003), created identity papers for Drimala Records, published Strangers in a Homeland (chapbook with Ashland Poetry Press, 2001), and published hundreds of poems, stories and essays in Many Mountains Moving, Xconnect, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Crosscurrents, Drexel Online Journal, Green Mountain Review, and Washington Square. He taught creative writing at the University of Northern Colorado from 2002 to 2007. He has a Ph.D. in British Romanticism and an MFA from NYU.

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore Born in 1940 in Oakland, California, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore's first book of poems, Dawn Visions, was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, San Francisco, in 1964; and the second, Burnt Heart/Ode to the War Dead, in 1972. He created and directed The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company in Berkeley, California in the late '60s, and presented two major productions, The Walls Are Running Blood and Bliss Apocalypse. He became a Sufi Muslim in 1970; performed the Hajj in 1972; and lived and traveled throughout Morocco, Spain, Algeria and Nigeria, landing in California and publishing The Desert is the Only Way Out, and Chronicles of Akhira in the early '80s (Zilzal Press). Residing in Philadelphia since 1990, he has published The Ramadan Sonnets (1996, Jusoor/City Lights) and The Blind Beekeeper (2002, Jusoor/Syracuse University Press). He has been the major editor for a number of works, including The Burdah of Shaykh Busiri, translated by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf; and the poetry of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Munir Akash. He is also widely published on the worldwide web: The American Muslim, DeenPort, among others. The Ecstatic Exchange Series has brought out the extensive body of his works of poetry; In 2005: Mars & Beyond, Laughing Buddha Weeping Sufi, Salt Prayers, and a revised edition of Ramadan Sonnets; in 2006: Psalms for the Brokenhearted, I Imagine a Lion, Coattails of the Saint, Love is a Letter Burning in a High Wind, and Abdallah Jones and the Disappearing-Dust Caper; in 2007: The Flame of Transformation Turns to Light, Underwater Galaxies, The Music Space, and Cooked Oranges; and in 2008 Through Rose Colored Glasses.

Amanda K. Norris is a police reporter for The Hour (Norwalk, CT). Originally from Lubbock, TX, she came to the Philadelphia area to attend Temple University and only recently relocated with her husband, Kevin Williamson, and cat, Mae West, to Connecticut. She has published articles in Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia Style, University City Review, and The Weekly Press, as well as Insight on the News. She has also published a poem in the online journal of sexuality and letters titled Eve in Hand for which she occasionally blogs. She graduated summa cum laude from Temple University with a B.A. in English in 2004.

Tamara Oakman, hosting The Light of Unity Festival with Book Corner, has won awards in poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and drama. She has been published by Many Mountains Moving, Philadelphia Stories, Mad Poets Review and other journals; reads poetry and fiction everywhere in Philadelphia and the tri-state area; judged a writing contest for Hidden River Arts; and is completing a Master's of English at Arcadia University. She has hosted at venues such as, Robin's Bookstore and Voices and Visions Bookstore. She is currently leading The Business of Words poetry workshop here at Book Corner.

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri has won numerous awards for poetry and has been published in literary magazines, anthologies, and online Web sites, including Philadelphia Stories, Many Mountains Moving, Northwest Cultural Council, and Mad Poets Review. She conducts a monthly poetry workshop, Center City Poets, at Borders bookstore in Center City, Philadelphia and is a poetry editor for Philadelphia Stories Magazine. In 2008, she will host the Mad Poets Society Donatucci Reading in South Philadelphia. She is working on the compilation of her first chapbook, which should be completed sometime in 2008.

Daniel Schall was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. He is currently an undergraduate senior at Arcadia University, where he is also head of the university English Club and the English Honor Society (Sigma Tau Delta). He tutors undergraduate and graduate students on the craft of writing at the university Writing Center. He publishes his own chapbook, The Fridge Door, which showcases and celebrates the varied emotions and influences of writing across many curricula. His poetry is best described as; "anti-ideological, a championing of the happy agony that is the postmodern condition."

Ian Wolf's experiences of suffering and spiritual joys are what inspire his music and poetry. He has gained great solace expressing himself through music and poetry. He has been performing spoken word poetry and music at various open microphones in the Philadelphia Area for the past 10 years. He was recently featured singing blues and reciting spoken word at Set Table and Arcadia University.

To find out more call 215.567.0527