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KORE PRESS | NEWS | AUTHORS | BUY BOOKS | DONATE NOW | SUBMISSIONS | BLOG | CONTACT US | HOME Community SPECIAL EVENT: April 7, 2017 5-9pm An Evening with Tracie Morris Dinner + Drinks + full-length performance of Tracie’s Talk-Back to Kubrick’s "Eyes Wide Shut" at the historic Scottish Rites Cathedral, Tucson TICKETS ON SALE SOON! Ticket pricing is tiered. A number of pay-what-you-can tickets will be available. Event offers dinner (food trucks on site or provided by Kore with higher priced ticket option), drinks (drink tickets or open bar with higher priced ticket option), meet-n-greet with Tracie, pre-performance talk with Dr Stephanie Troutman, evening-length performance, raffle tickets for everybody, solidarity resource table and more! "As anyone who’s gone to the movies or a poetry reading or church in a Black neighborhood or an Indian neighborhood knows, we *talk back*. We must in order to make our own space in the performance, our own space in the world."—Kazim Ali Tracie Morris is a poet, singer, critic, scholar, bandleader, and British and American-trained actor. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU. Her work has been presented at the Whitney, Ron Feldman Gallery, The New Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Dia: Chelsea and in dozens of musical recording projects. Her most recent book (Kore Press 2016) is handholding: 5 kinds (sonic, textual engagements). Tracie is Professor and Director of the MFA program in Performance + Performance Studies at Pratt Institute. SAVE THE DATE: March 21 Kore Press & POG at La Cocina’s Tuesdays for Tucson 6-10pm, 10% of the dining and drinking proceeds go to Kore Press & POG Eat, drink & be inspired! Kore Biters is a bi-monthly interview series that highlights the writing and literary activism of women writers who are transgressive and transformative . by Arisa White and Imani Sims ON HIATUS IN 2017 Unapologetic Solitude & Writing Despite the Gaze Tara Betts To paraphrase an Adrienne Rich quotation about how a poem breaks silence to be made—what silences did you break to create your newest collection? I wanted to break the silences around divorce—those feelings of shame, failure, and inadequacy, and even if a person feels angry, depressed, or abandoned, you remember there was love, at some point, and you can find it again. I have found that many successful people have confided in me and tried to seek support after their own divorces, but I also feel like this book is about claiming reinvention. You are not a niche, you are not a brand. You are an evolving human being, and even Adrienne Rich was a master of evolution as she wrote more and openly claimed herself sexually and politically. However, I often find myself thinking of Audre Lorde’s quote on breaking silences from The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” from The Cancer Journals: The fact that we are here and that I speak not these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken. (excerpt, read full interview here) INDEX for Biters Notes From The Motherfield is an edited column of fieldnotes, essays, and writings of various shapes and durations by motherwriters. Little Book of Herbs by Jenna Korsmo I quit smoking last summer. It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to let go. My wife and I are parents. We adopted our daughter from foster care recently. It took 2 years. We also have a son that’s been with us for over a year. We are waiting to adopt him, too, but that might not happen due to really complicated, unfortunate, stomp your feet, unfair circumstances. But, it might happen, but it might not, but it might. We love him differently, and my mom who loves being his grandmother says it’s OK, because we’re just people, and we don’t have to love everyone we meet in the same way. But, I want to love him in a way I imagined to. I want my love to fit in the box I imagined it to fit in. My mom and I used to travel back and forth from Tucson to Phoenix a lot when I was a teenager. She used to play Al Green tapes like she got paid for it. Listen to this part, Niña,” she would say, doesn’t that make your heart break?” And it did. I loved watching her in the car listening to music that made her feel that way. I wonder if my children will ever see me like I see her. [excerpt] see the full piece here. INDEX for Notes from the Motherfield FEATURED POEM-of-the-Week by Jillian Weise THE VILLANELLE TAKES A STAND I am so sick of reading poems by people who must be bored in their homes about soldiers with their legs blown off and how sorry the people feel for them and how awful America is and rotten. I am so sick of reading poems by people who have their civil rights and say, Yes, I feel your pain before they pull a short night for a long poem about legs [excerpt, read full poem here] INDEX for POWs SPONSORS | PARTNERS | FUNDERS Kore Press is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary arts organization made possible by grants, book sales, submissions fees, sponsorships, memberships, and gifts from individuals like you. MEMBERSHIP Become a member of the Press & support progressive social justice, innovative intersectional feminism, and contemporary literary work by women. Activism Edwidge Danticat selects LETICIA DEL TORO’S "Café Colima" as the winner of Kore’s 2016 Short Fiction Award "A moving and powerful story about sisterhood, grief, loss, and picking up the pieces without completely losing one’s self."—Edwidge Danticat Leticia del Toro is a California poet and short story writer with roots in Jalisco, Mexico. Her work has appeared in Huizache, Zyzzyva, Cipactli and Mutha Magazine , among others. She earned an M.A. in English from the University of California Davis and has attended the Voices of Our Nations Arts program. Her awards and honors include a Hedgebrook Residency for Women Authoring Change, a fellowship from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Scholars Award in fiction to attend Bread Loaf. see full guidelines and finalists here Lidia Yuknavitch selects MING LAUREN HOLDEN’s "Refuge" as the winner of Kore’s 2016 Memoir Award "The story we need to hear right now in the only voice that can tell it."—Lidia Yuknavitch Winner of Bellingham Review‘s 49th Parallel Poetry Award, Chattahoochee Review‘s Lamar York Nonfiction Prize and Glimmer Train‘s Family Matters Fiction Prize, MING HOLDEN is a writer, translator, activist, editor, teacher, humanitarian aid and development worker, and theater artist. She was invited by the United States Embassy to Suriname on a diplomatic speaking engagement under the U.S. Speakers Program to speak about creative writing and theater as tools for empowerment for Women’s History Month in 2014. ( Here is the U.S. government press release.) In 2011, she founded the Survival Girls , a self-sustaining theater group for young Congolese women in the slums of Nairobi. Her book about the experience, the nonfiction novella The Survival Girls , came out in 2013 through Wolfram Productions. Ming also won the USAID worldwide essay contest for inclusion in the USAID Frontiers in Development publication alongside work by Bill Gates, Indra Noori, Paul Collier, and others. Her essay about the Survival Girls got some love from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself in the book’s introduction ! (Ming’s writing about the Girls was also nominated for the AWP Intro Award for Nonfiction.) see full contest info & finalists here Robin Coste Lewis selects JULY WESTHALE’S Trailer Trash for Kore’s 2016 First Book Award see full guidelines and contest info here UnSilencing Anatomies was a 2-month long, city-wide engagement project designed by Kore Press (inspired by Monica Ong’s Silent Anatomies), and developed with her collaborators, including the University of Arizona, Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, La Pilita and 23 other cultural, health...