Mel Brake  

Sunday May 4, 6pm - Poetry

Vic Compher, Tom Torosian, Mel Brake, Maria Fama

Vic Compher's new book is entitled, Lifestreams/Lebensstrom. Vic composes in English and German; his works have appeared in a number of American and German poetry magazines, including Philadelphia Poets, International Poetry Review (English/German), Oxford Magazine (on-line), Das Boot (English/German), Mohland Jahrbuch (English/German), Fundstuecke (English/German), Mad Poets Review, etc. His poems express reverence for a complex, dark, and beautiful world.

Maria Fama has written three books of poetry, co-founded a video production company, recorded her poetry in CD compilations of music and poetry, and given readings across the country as well as on TV, Radio, Video, and Film. She appears in the 2007 film, "Pipes of Peace", about the late jazz bagpipe musician, Rufus Harley, as well as in the award winning documentary "Prisoners Among Us". Fama was awarded the 2002 and the 2005 Aniello Lauri Award for Creative Writing. The 2006 winner of the Amy Tritsch Needle Award for Poetry, she has a new book of poems, Looking For Cover, forthcoming from Bordighera Press.

Mel Brake graduated from West Chester University. As a romantic, he has written poetry as a method of healing, self-love and to express his inner thoughts and feelings. He was published in Philadelphia Poets 2007 & 2008, Mad Poets Review 2007, Fox Chase Review and The 12th Annual Poetry Ink Chapbook. His first CD/chapbook entitled, "Adoration of The Sol," was published in the spring of 2008.

Tom Luke Torosian was born as a first generation Armenian-American in 1929 in New York City. He served the Presbyterian church as an ordained minister for forty years. He is a published poet and has read his poetry in various venues in Philadelphia and York, England. Mr. Torosian recently completed a memoir about his parent's survival of the 1915-1918 Armenian genocide by the Turks and his story as a first generation American. He is married, has four daughters, four grandchildren and resides with his wife in Philadelphia.