Notes from the Motherfield LIVE!
Friday, April 12, 6pm doors; performances 6:30pm
Jewish History Museum’s Memorial Garden / 564 S Stone Ave, Tucson 85701
$15 in advance; $20 at the door. Light snacks & drink provided; bring something for the potluck table & share the love if you are able!
Join Kore Press for the launch in this new series of riveting mothers-tell-stories event with six amazing women writers. Based on Kore’s online essay series and newsletter feature, “Notes from the Motherfield,” this LIVE storytelling party presents two spoken sets by local and visiting artists who perform 10-minute versions of longer, written works on the wild, wooly, sacred, thorny, liberatory, stunning and claustrophobic aspects of motherhood! The concept of the mother field was coined by Joy Harjo on her blog and refers to the imaginal colliding that happens in the motherfield–somewhere between fury and beauty, the ineffable and mundane, boundlessness and exactitude, sacred and profane.
The evening’s line up includes these powerful super hero conduits to the mother field and their #realtalk about what happens there—mothering while on grief; collisions between disability and technology; feeling trapped with toddlers; panic, tantrums, and sisterhood; losing culture; mothering and art making, and so very much more.
Beth Alvarado is the author of Anxious Attachments (essays), Anthropologies: A Family Memoir, Not a Matter of Love (stories), and Jillian in the Borderlands: a cycle of rather dark tales.She lived in Tucson for most of her life. She married her late husband, Fernando, when she was nineteen and has been a part of his large extended family since then. Much of her writing is about intensely personal moments—from caring for preemies to tending to the dying—but also about the social life that goes on around the edges of those moments and the interior life that expands because of them. See the video of Beth’s performance here.
Adiba Nelson is a New York City girl turned desert dweller. She currently resides in Tucson, AZ and is the author of the popular children’s book about inclusion, Meet ClaraBelle Blue. Adiba is also a contributing writer for online magazine The Mighty, My Brown Baby, Everyday Feminism, and The Huffington Post. Her book, Meet ClaraBelle Blue is loosely based on her precocious daughter, Emory, and for this reason she has made it her life’s mission to ensure that children and adults of all abilities have access to the same opportunities and representation in life. See the video of Adiba’s performance here.
Jenna Korsmo finds something both absolutely beautiful, and completely absurd in every single part of her life. She’s a nonfiction writer who often exposes her bad judgment, while hoping to unveil some kind of bizarre silver lining. She’s currently working on a book of essays which has made its way to be her favorite style of storytelling. Jenna lives in Tucson Arizona with her wife, their two children, two dogs, and all the cats. See the video of Jenna’s performance here.
Shefali Milczarek-Desai is an attorney, teacher, and author who integrates her experiences in the areas of litigation, employment, and immigration law with her passion for education, writing, and public service. In addition to supervising and mentoring students, Shefali is an advocate for marginalized populations and a legal scholar on sanctuary city issues. Director of the University of Arizona Workers’ Rights Clinic, Shefali is also a Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, a Notre Dame Law School Feminist Jurisprudence award winner, and has authored numerous articles and essays as well as a book-length manuscript selected by Lidia Yuknavitch as a finalist for Kore Press’ Memoir Award. See the video of Shefali’s performance here.
Melani “Mele” Martinez is a teacher, writer, mother, and flamenco artist from Tucson, Arizona. She has studied and performed flamenco for over 25 years. Mele holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and is currently at work on a memoir entitled The Molino. Her latest flamenco project Luz, a solo dance production and blog series honoring mothers in the arts, was awarded grants from Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Arts Foundation of Tucson and Southern Arizona. She co-directs Flamenco Tucsonense with her husband and works as a Lecturer in the Writing Program at the University of Arizona.
Sara Hubbs is a writer of creative non-fiction, a teacher of movement, a multi-media artist, and a mother. She completed an MFA in Visual Art at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and has shown nationally and internationally in Mexico City, Abu Dhabi, New York City, and recently in a two-person show at Modified Arts in Phoenix. She is the co-founder of Stew-dio Visit, an artist collective. Her piece, “Night Fishing,” will be published in a forthcoming anthology from Talking Writing on mental illness. She was raised in Phoenix, AZ and now lives in Tucson with her family.
Thanks to Jen Nowicki Clark for her generous story coaching skills, and to Tucson’s Jewish History Museum for hosting us in their Memorial Garden. Snacks and some drink provided; please bring offerings for the potluck table if you are able.
As the Director of the consulting firm, Creative Narrations, Jen Nowicki Clark has been facilitating live and multi-media digital storytelling workshops for 18 years nationally and internationally. Jen also serves on the board of Odyssey Storytelling, a non-profit organization supporting monthly live storytelling events in Tucson. She is an educator, organizer, artist, story coach and parent who loves language and witnessing how sharing stories in new ways can transform and connect us as individuals and as communities. She holds a BA in Sociology from Boston College and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Arizona.
Tickets $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
Proceeds from this event support the intersectional feminist work of the Kore Press Institute, dedicated to keeping the margins in the center through publishing, social justice education, and innovative community programming. With a particular focus on women and trans writers, artists of color, and queer voices, Kore’s award-winning art and justice work has impacted communities locally and nationally for 25 years.