Short Summary

• Kore Press---a Tucson-based nonprofit, feminist publishing house and award-winning innovative literary activist organization dedicated to the creative genius of women and girls for 24 years--is seeking to raise $20K to support programming and the publication of works that fill a gap left by mainstream publishing.

Why Kore? Why people-powered publishing?

To create a people-powered publishing house has clearly become THE most sustainable route for extending the 24 year old feminist platform for women and marginalized voices that is Kore Press. Our goal is to bring the next season of important projects from the Press to the public as a people-powered enterprise. A significant portion of our budgets have come from support by the beloved NEA, NEH and associated funding sources. Grants are lovely, soft and volatile resources that have continued to dwindle across recent years, and now, are actively threatened. Our fight to save these important institutions is far from over. Yesterday morning, May 23, President Trump released his proposal for a fiscal year '18 budget (running from October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018), which eliminates both the NEA and the NEH.

In order to launch the Press' Fall season of amazingness (with grants as the icing on the Kore cake, and not the cake itself) we need you on our team like never before! 

While the rights of women, immigrants, people of color, queer & trans folks continue to be threatened, the dedicated staff of women at Kore show up to reveal their commitment to impactful, literary justice publishing and programming. We invite you to become a part of the people-powered publishing team for sustaining Kore Press.

Joining our team is a commitment to indie feminist publishing and to an expansive literary landscape. It's a YES to diversity making our communities better, more real, and more rich. It is a YES to trans and queer writers. It's a YES to all women and a YES to minorities. It's a YES to young women's voices, and to visibility no matter what.

Here's what's slated for Fall '17:

1. The long-awaited, 6-years in the making, one-of-a-kind anthology edited by Dawn Lundy Martin and Erica Hunt for Kore Press, Letters to the Future: Black Women/Radical Writing.  The collection celebrates formal and linguistically innovative late-modern and contemporary work by Black women from the United States, England, Canada, and the Caribbean—work that challenges readers to participate in meaning making.  The writing in the anthology is driven by the writer’s desire to radically present, uncovering what she knows and does not know, as well as critically addressing the future. The book is slated to be launched during a a series of events during the Thinking Its Presence, Race, Advocacy, Solidarity in the Arts conference in Tucson, Oct 19-21.​

• ​Why is this important? The anthology helps re-write the misnomer that innovative writing is white writing and does it with a particular interest in gender. Is it a coincidence that #blacklivesmatter was coined and put into action by black queer women in the same moment that there is a proliferation of black women writing experimental work? Editors Martin and Hunt say, "We don’t think so. This anthology is part of our means of simply looking at what we are doing together to re-write the future world as unfamiliar. Indeed, it is the familiar, the well-worn racial and racist past that is killing us.”

2. The posthumous memoir by first generation Catholic Polish Holocaust survivor, Lusia Slomkowska, Christine's Crossing. This trauma memoir is unlike any other and takes its place within a community of testimony, and leaves a historical record. It represents a story of Polish Catholic Holocaust victims and survivors, a story that has not yet been widely told or understood, and will become a part of the archives of written, audio and visual record of the Holocaust, along side the stories of the Jewish genocide. Slomkowska's project is about the personal and historical (trans generational) survival of trauma, breaking silence, and surviving as a witness to the impact of genocide.

and

3. Stories can change our world. Kore Press, for the second year, is getting behind the sacred art of story-telling and the empowering practice of truth telling by women by offering an annual Memoir Award, judged by the bad-ass, beautiful writer and heart-wrenching truth sayer, Cheryl Strayed. Strayed says we can learn that “part of being able to bear the things we can’t bear is not about tossing them off, not about making the weight lighter, but simply learning that we have the capacity to carry it.”

This Kore Award is designed not only to launch an emerging woman writer, but demonstrates the Press' commitment to narrative journalism and truth-telling that transcends personal story and resonates with others, as a tool for transforming women's lives.

What We Need & What You Get

People-powered publishing needs to raise $20K to launch in the fall.

Here is what the money is going to:

• $1000 design for two books 
• $4000 book printing (1000 and 400 copies of each)
• $2400 marketing ($400 month x 6 months)
• $8000 publishing staff: editorial, publishing ($1333 x 6 months)
• $3000 book publicist  ($600/mo x 5 months)
• $1600 anthology editorial/artist fees (16 contributors)

The perks!

We are excited to share our campaign bling with you: the books! Fun tee shirts, temporary tattoos, chances to win a car, cash or airline tickets! Your name printed in our books, dinner with poets, gift certificates, two nights in a Tucson cottage, special delivery services, pencil drawing portrait session, virtual flourishes of thanks and kisses, and for artists---writing/performance consultancies with super star writers and editors. More creative perks from friends of the Press will be added as the campaign rolls out, too.

What do we do if we don't reach your entire goal, you ask? We'll scale back or do more of the work in-house rather than farming it out! 

The Impact

Kore has completed two successful crowd funding campaigns in the past--one for a single book project, and another for a 10-week, 40-partner, city-wide engagement series called Big Read Tucson, which contemporized Emily Dickinson's life and work. 

What is the impact of envelope-pushing, new work . .  . on the culture, the canon, the artists, the readers? We believe the impact of both the first generation Holocaust trauma memoir, Christine's Crossing, and the anthology of radical writing by black women artists,  Letters to the Future, will be nothing less than groundbreaking. Here is the list of contributing artists to the anthology:

Lillian Yvonne Bertram

Octavia Butler

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

R. Erica Doyle

Betsy Fagin

Tonya Foster

Renee Gladman

Ajdua Garzi Nzinga Greaves

Duriel E. Harris

Yona Harvey

Harmony Holiday

Adrienne Kennedy

Ruth Ellen Kocher

Robin Coste Lewis

Tracie Morris

Harryette Mullen

Akilah Oliver

Julie Patton

M. NourbeSe Philip

Adrian Piper

Khadijah Queen

Claudia Rankine

Deborah Richards

Metta Sama

Ntozake Shange

Dawn Lundy Martin

Evie Shockley

Giovanni Singleton

Kara Walker

Wendy Walters

Simone White

Lucille Clifton

Sonia Sanchez

Wanda Coleman

Jayne Cortez

Tisa Bryant

Who is Kore Press?

• Co-Founder & Publisher: Lisa Bowden, long-time editor, curator, writer, mother, activist for justice and all her linked, gendered concerns.
• Managing Editor: Ann Dernier, poet, editor, manuscript midwife, mentor, mother.
• Marketing & Publicity: Annie Guthrie, poet, jeweler, curator, oracular writing coach, mother.
• Bookkeeping: June Rettig, theater artist, shoe-maker, Rancho Linda Vista Artist Community member.
• Submissions & Contests: Jussara Esprit (former student intern-turned-remote staffer and knower-of-all-things-Kore), writer, reader, sister, family leader.
• Social Media & Operations: Sahar Mitchell, circus-artist, performer, writer, mother of two teen girls.
• Fulfillment & Bookbinding: Laura Bargfeld, film student, writer, artist.
• Anthology Editorial Intern: Sarah Darwich, writer, feminist organizer, digital media worker, remote intern and recent grad of Duke University
• Book Marketing Intern: Jenna Whitney, writer, young publishing professional, student of Portland State's Masters program in publishing and writing.

Risks & Challenges

With a 24-year track record of publishing and programming in a small, non-profit, arts environment, our awareness of the risks and obstacles on the way to achieving our goals are keen! We have been doing amazing, important work for over 2 decades and know how to adjust, retool, and deliver against all odds. There are also a lot of talented folks and entities out there, so it's a richly competitive, exciting playing field for capturing attention and resources. That is a reality. It's June, summer travels, retreats, and unplugging have begun. We will send some snail mail letters, make phone calls, send lots of emails, and do what we do best online as well to capture the hearts and minds of an expanding circle of believers who care!

Other Ways You Can Help

We know that some people just can't contribute, but that doesn't mean we don't need you on our team!

• Can you help get the word out and make some noise about this campaign?
• It's super easy with the Indiegogo share tools! Thank You so much for reading!