Kore Press
| Company type | Nonprofit |
|---|---|
| Industry | Publishing |
| Founded | 1993 |
| Founder | Karen Falkenstrom, Lisa Bowden |
| Headquarters | Tucson , United States |
Area served | United States |
Key people | Lisa Bowden (publisher), Shannon Cain (former Executive Director) |
| Products | Books, audio recordings, broadsides (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction) |
Kore Press is a nonprofit literary publisher in the United States, established in 1993 and headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The press specializes in publishing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction authored by women, including those who are cisgender, transgender, or gender non-conforming. Their catalog features books, audio recordings, and broadsides.
The press was co-founded by poet Karen Falkenstrom and Lisa Bowden, who serves as publisher. Kore Press accepts manuscripts through open submissions and annually grants awards recognizing a debut poetry collection, a single short story, and memoir or memoir-in-essays works. From 2004 until 2009, Shannon Cain held the position of Executive Director.
Distribution of Kore Press publications is managed by Independent Publishers Group. The organization has secured funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and earned accolades such as the National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading Prize. Distinguished writers published by Kore Press include Alison Hawthorne Deming, Carolyn Hembree, Ofelia Zepeda, Linda Hogan, and Jennifer Barber. Kelcey Parker’s For Sale by Owner received the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the Short Fiction category.
In 2010, Kore Press created "Coming In Hot," a solo theatrical piece inspired by their 2008 anthology Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks from Vietnam to Iraq, which was co-edited by Bowden and Cain.
Highlighting its dedication to social justice initiatives, Kore Press initiated justice-focused programming in 2011 with Big Read Tucson, collaborating with the National Endowment for the Arts' literacy campaign to involve 40 community organizations in honoring poet Emily Dickinson. Their 2014 project The Listening Project involved teenage girls conducting interviews with female military personnel; the resulting audio stories were broadcast publicly and archived online. In 2016, Kore Press organized Unsilencing Anatomies, a two-month community event examining how ethnicity, sexuality, and gender shape health experiences. The following year, they hosted poet and scholar Tracie Morris to explore themes of race, gender, and class through performance.