STAFF  

Lisa Bowden, Publisher and Co-Founder, is the editor of Autumnal: A Collection of Elegies, co-editor of Powder: Writing by Women in Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq, and co-adapter and director of Coming in Hot (a play based on Powder). She has developed Kore's long list of authors and award winning programming as a literary activist, artist, and feminist culture worker. She is a recipient of the Maryann Campau Fellowship for poetry from the University of Arizona Poetry Center and a Woman on the Move Award from the YWCA. A poet who works with an improvisational ensemble of dancers, writers, and musicians called Movement Salon, Lisa has studied English and Philosophy at the University of Arizona and in London. She lives in Tucson with her partner Eve and daughter Djuna. Her poetry can be found at backroomlive.wordpress.com, Spiralorb.net, and thedrunkenboat.com.

Jussara Esprit, Editorial & Publishing intern, is completing her senior year in The Honor's College at The University of Arizona, where she is majoring in English Literature. Upon her graduation, she plans to pursue a career in book publishing. After finding her voice in writing and passion for reading, she is now excited to work with Kore Press to empower other women through literature. In her free time she loves to work on various art pieces, always with as much glitter and color as possible. Although her family and friends disagree, she is a comedian.

Sara Jean Deegan, was born and raised in Los Angeles. She recently graduated from the University of Arizona where she majored in Creative Non-fiction and minored in English. She is an aspiring writer. Dog person. Loves the sun. If she were a flower, she would probably be a jasmine flower. They smell good, adapt to many environments, and are simple yet beautiful: all things she strives for in her daily life. And, oh, she has a beautiful brindle pit bull mix dog who thinks he is a lap dog.  She is inspired by Kore Press especially because it feeds her passion for engaging in a forum dedicated to sharing feminist literary activism. 
Hannah Jackson Robb, Publisher's Assistant & Special Projects intern, is a native Tucsonan and an admirer of the Sonoran desert. She recently graduated from the University of Arizona's Honor's College where she studied Philosophy, English, and Gender and Women’s Studies. Hannah is an ardent worshipper of female-centered literary art. Her passion for writing and social justice led her to Kore Press, as well as inspired the topic of her senior thesis: feminist responses and solutions to sexual violence against women on college campuses. She writes essays and poetry, drinks coffee, signs in American Sign Language, spends time with her mother, jogs, and lays in the sun. Hannah works for the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind as a teaching assistant in Deaf elementary classrooms.

Ann Dernier, Managing Editor, has served Kore Press in a significant editorial capacity since 2004. She is the editor of The Best of Kore Press, 2012 Poetry. She was director of the Tucson Writers’ Project at the Tucson Public Library and a juried artist on the Arizona Commission on the Arts Teaching Artist Roster. She received a B.A. from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her collection, In The Fury (Grey Book Press, 2015), was a finalist for the 2013 Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry and a semi-finalist for the 2013 Crab Orchard Series for Poetry First Book Award.

Patricia Grace King, Fiction Editor, has served Kore Press in a significant editorial capacity since 2011. She grew up in North Carolina and spent years in Spain and Guatemala. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a Ph.D. in English from Emory University. Her stories appear in Ploughshares, Narrative Magazine, Nimrod, and other journals. Her chapbooks, The Death of Carrie Bradshaw and Rubia, won the Kore Press Short Fiction and the Jeanne Leiby Memorial contests, respectively. She is the recipient of a fiction fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and was the 2013-2014 Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She lives in the Printers Row neighborhood of Chicago with her husband.
Layli LongSoldier, Poetry Editor, is a poet who holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with Honors from Bard College. She resides in Tsaile, AZ on the Navajo Nation and is an adjunct faculty member at Diné College. She has served as a contributing editor to Drunken Boat. Her poems have recently appeared in The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review Online, American Indian Journal of Culture and Research and the PEN America site. Her first chapbook of poetry is titled Chromosomory (Q Ave Press, 2010) and forthcoming manuscript is titled WHEREAS.
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNISTS  
Imani Sims, MA., Kore Biters Editor, lives in Seattle, WA where she drinks gallons of chai tea on rainy Saturdays plotting new ways to share her story and make room for the Queer Woman of Color narrative. She spun her first performance poem at the age of fourteen. Since then, she has developed an infinitely rippling love for poetry in all of its forms. She believes in the healing power of words and the transformational nuance of the human story. Imani works to empower youth and adults through various writing courses and interdisciplinary shows. She sings while doing everything but writing and loves to create meals in the kitchen.  She is a Board Member for Earth Pearl Collective, a non-profit dedicated to creating safe spaces for queer black womyn to be empowered through artistic collaborations, social events, and educational workshops. Her book (A)live Heart is forthcoming on Sibling Rivalry Press.
Arisa White, Kore Biters Editor, a Cave Canem fellow, and the author of Post Pardon, Hurrah’s Nest, and A Penny Saved. A 2013-14 recipient of an Investing in Artist Grant fPS--pleaserom the Center for Cultural Innovation and an advisory board member for Flying Object, she is a BFA faculty member at Goddard College. A native New Yorker, living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife, Arisa is adapting Post Pardon into an opera with a Cultural Funding Grant from the City of Oakland. arisawhite.com
POEM-OF-THE-WEEK CURATORS, 2015-2016  
Meg Day is the 2015-2016 recipient of the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, a 2013 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and the author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street 2014, winner of the 2013 Barrow Street First Book Prize in Poetry), When All You Have Is a Hammer (winner of the 2012 Gertrude Press Chapbook Contest), and We Can’t Read This (winner of the 2013 Gazing Grain Chapbook Contest). Selected for Best New Poets 2013 and winner of the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award, Meg has also received awards and fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Hedgebrook, Squaw Valley Writers, the Taft-Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities, and the International Queer Arts Festival. Meg is currently a PhD candidate, Steffensen-Cannon Fellow, & Point Foundation Scholar in Poetry & Disability Poetics at the University of Utah. www.megday.com
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American Book Award-winning poet and educator of Huron, Metis, Cherokee, French Canadian, Portuguese, Irish, Scot, heritage whose books include The Year of the Rat, Dog Road Woman, Off-Season City Pipe, Blood Run, Burn and Streaming as well as a memoir, Rock Ghost, Willow, Deer. She is the editor of the anthologies Sing: Poetry of the Indigenous Americas, Effigies and Effigies II and currently serves as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. Hedge Coke came of age working fields, factories, and waters and is currently at work on a film, Red Dust: resiliency in the dirty thirties and a new CD with Rd Kla.

Niki Herd grew up in Cleveland and received degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and Antioch in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies and has been supported by organizations including the Astraea Foundation, Cave Canem, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her first collection of poems, The Language of Shedding Skin (Main Street Rag, 2010), was published as part of the Editor’s Select Poetry Series. She lives in Washington, DC.

EDITORIAL VOLUNTEERS
Kore's editorial work is literally driven by thousands of volunteer hours a year generously donated by over 50 female and transgendered writers who are committed to helping other women writers and who support the mission of Kore Press. In deep and ongoing gratitude, thank you all!