Saturday, February 27, 2021 on Zoom
6pm Tucson MT / 5pm PT / 8pm ET
This event is ASL interpreted. Accessibility for the Deaf and hard of hearing community made possible by Brandy Resnick and Torrey Mansager.
Ticket sales closed at midnight February 26.
Regular admission $20 / Discounted $15 / Gift-a-ticket $20
Gifted tickets create access for women of color and Deaf community members who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend. Contact Tina@KorePress.Org to request a ticket.
When you purchase tickets, you will be sent Zoom access instructions just prior to the event.
The Motherfield is a movement of radical mothers dedicated to telling complicated truths and listening. Story-coaching, knowledge, and support is shared by storytelling alumni and staff to continue building connections and communities of care for mothers through story telling.
Kore’s ninth listening session in the MF Live series presents five amazing mother culture researchers, science educators, writers, inspirers, storytellers, knitters, advocates, voters, and women who are living FULLY and sometimes ragefully during the pandemic. Spun off of Kore’s online essay series and newsletter feature, “Notes from the Motherfield,” the LIVE event presents spoken work by rad mamas across the US telling their unique truths in 10-minute stories about the wild, gritty, gory, graceful, sacred, liberatory, and often painful encounters while mothering.
Help us usher in a brighter year with realtalk from these superheroes:
Corey Knox is a chronic late starter. She started having kids at 41, finished her PhD at 54, and has not yet stared in her first Broadway musical. She’s a mom to two teen aged girls and does researchy type work on racism, culture, and education at the University of Arizona. Her Black dad, Isadore, and her white mom, Ellen, collided in 1964 when things were getting good. Neither are alive anymore, but she has the biggest juiciest, awesome family ever—8 half siblings (from the papa’s side) who, with their grown children have created a Knox movement with some serious voting power. Originally from Wisconsin, she’s been out here in the desert for about 20 years and prior to Tucson, she lived in Alaska for 12 years. Yes, “I’d go back, to Alaska. It’s not as cold as it used to be.”
Rachel Miller came to Tucson from the wilds of northern England more than three decades ago. Rachel thought she’d stay a couple of years and then return to England. But she slowly fell in love with Tucson – the starry skies, the mountains, the history, the people, the crazy cheap but fabulous music scene, and then an astronomer. Dogs, cats, children, chickens and the tall astronomer (not necessarily in that order) now take up her heart, and her passion is health and science education. She works for TMC HealthCare Communications Department where she uses her experience as a former science educator to communicate to the community about all kinds of health issues. In moments in between she harbors fantasies about yarn filled explorations to woolly lands.
Born in Mexico City, Natalia Treviño is the author of two books of poems: VirginX (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Lavando la Dirty Laundry (Mongrel Empire Press, 2014). She has won the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and others. Lavando La Dirty Laundry has recently been translated in a dual-language edition in Albanian and Macedonian. Natalia graduated from the University of Texas / San Antonio and the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s MFA program. She is a Professor of English at San Antonio’s Northwest Vista College. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals, as well as the anthologies The Southern Poetry Anthology, Mirrors Beneath the Earth (Curbstone Press), Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press), Contra: Texas Poets Speak Out (FlowerSong Press), and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (Cutthroat).
Tiffany Nakatani is a seeker and therefore constantly learning. She calls herself a multi-passionate woman, finding joy in helping others find their purpose and facilitating healing. She has traveled the world, has been involved in mission work that has also inspired and shaped her into who she is now and how she impacts others. As a young native Tucsonan, she knew there was something different about her, that she “did not fit in.” She thought it was a curse at the time, but later saw that it was ok, that she was ok. It took different experiences in life (some good, some hurtful) to bring her into her purpose. Tiffany is a black woman, mother, daughter, wife, sister, aunt and friend, who has gained experience through simply living life, constantly changing, growing and learning. She would like others to be inspired by her story and to know that if she can do it… they most definitely can too.
Penelope Starr founded Odyssey Storytelling, Arizona’s longest running community storytelling event, in 2004 and wrote a book about it in 2016. The Radical Act of Community Storytelling: Empowering Voices in Uncensored Events, is part memoir, part how-to and part advocacy for the democratic structure of community storytelling. She is a writer, workshop presenter, SoulCollage facilitator, and restorer of Navajo rugs. Her current novel, Desert Haven, is looking for a publisher. She lives in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains with her life partner, Silvia. Penelope is the mother of two adult children and grandmother to six mostly adult children. You can see what she is up to at penelopestarr.com.
Emcee, Tenecia Phillips
Tenecia is a klutzy, awkward, nerdy public librarian who grew up on the southside of Tucson and once dreamed of being a law enforcement officer but realized her calling was to save the world, one information need at a time. She is committed to increasing the presence of Black staff in libraries, creating inclusive spaces that serve and represent the community she lives in, and raising awareness about social justice issues. Becoming a mother was never on her list of goals she wanted to accomplish in her lifetime but recognizes that there is no greater gift that she could have been given than being blessed with the honor of raising, guiding, loving, supporting, and continually frustrating The Princess (her daughter).
Creator & Host, Lisa Bowden
Lisa is KPI’s director and co-founder, has developed Kore’s 28-years long list of titles, projects, and award-winning programming as a publisher, activist, collaborator, writer and intersectional feminist culture worker. She was named the University of Arizona English Department 2018 Alumni of the Year Award, a Maryann Campau Fellow for poetry from the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and a Woman on the Move Awardee from the YWCA. Listen to an interview with Lisa on KXCI’s Artistories about Notes from the Motherfield LIVE here.
Thank you to alumni storytellers Tenecia Phillips, Tina Howard, for story coaching support; to Tenecia, also, for emceeing; to Denise Uyehara for behind the scenes tech support / training; and to Lisa Bowden for the Motherfield vision.
Gifted tickets create access for BIPOC and Deaf community members.
Ticket sales closed at midnight MT Feb 26.
The inspiration for Notes came from a phrase used by Joy Harjo on her blog decades ago: the motherfield refers to the imaginal, paradoxical colliding that happens only there and which requires an honest poetry to understand. Difficult truths exist side by side—between grief and beauty, ineffable and mundane, boundlessness and numbing routine is a sacred and profane space. We speak and listen into these stories to keep the narratives and knowledges about mothering complicated and real, to pierce the veil of perfection and isolation, and to make explicit our invisibilized labors.
Mamas of all kinds: We see you, we hear you, we appreciate you!
See more Motherfield info, bios, and links to videos of the stories here: October 25 2019, August 16 2019, April 12 2019. Individual videos are available from prior shows on a rolling basis. Screenings of some entire show will be available for periods of time for $10.
If you want to support this powerful storytelling initiative and the intersectional feminist work of Tucson’s Kore Press Institute, you may do so here.
Interested in telling a story? Let us know! See the Motherfield FAQs.
KPI is a nonprofit working at the nexus of arts and justice dedicated to radically connecting communities, to amplifying women’s voices through publishing, and social justice education. Kore Press is one of four remaining feminist presses in the country over 20 years old. Kore’s award-winning work has impacted communities locally and nationally for 28 years.