Cordella Press

21/08/2025

Here's to all the difficult women who refuse to dim their light.

19/07/2025

15/07/2025

Andrea Gibson, an award-winning poet and activist based in Boulder who served as Colorado's 10th Poet Laureate, passed away today. They were 49 years old.

"Renowned for inspiring poetry, advocacy for arts in education, and unique ability to connect with the vast and diverse poetry lovers of Colorado, Andrea was truly one of a kind and will be deeply missed by personal friends as well all who were touched by their poetry. My thoughts go out to Andrea’s loved ones during this difficult time,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis said in a statement.

Gibson, who had ovarian cancer, had lived in Boulder since 1999. They published more than a dozen books and albums featuring their poetry, which often centered LGBTQ+ issues.

"Come See Me in the Good Light," a documentary about Gibson, won the Festival Favorite Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Read more: https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/arts-culture/andrea-gibson-colorado-poet

09/07/2025

Thank you Toshi! 💛

She made a film called "Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison," marched from Selma to Montgomery, AL during the civil rights movement, and founded the Newport Folk Festival.

She also founded the Clearwater Festival and provided sign language interpreters, recycling, and wheelchair access decades before other festivals did.

Toshi Seeger was a powerhouse of folk music, activism, and community building. Rest in power, Toshi.

09/07/2025

08/07/2025

“We are called to assist the earth, to heal her wounds, and in the process heal our own.”

After becoming the first woman to earn a doctorate degree in East and Central Africa, Wangari Maathai started a movement that led to the planting of 50 million trees, a more democratic society and the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1976, Wangari Maathai became involved with the National Council of Women in Kenya. She suggested that they should start community-based tree planting to combat deforestation and desertification. In 1977, she developed her idea into a grassroots movement organisation called the Green Belt Movement (GBM).

Maathai began the project by planting nine trees in her own yard – as it grew it became the largest tree planting project Africa had ever seen, encouraging women to plant trees in “green belts” around their towns and villages and to think ecologically. Her movement grew and spread to other African countries. With the GBM, Maathai hoped to promote sustainability as well as create jobs for women and empower them to gain economic and social power.

Besides giving jobs to women and planting more than 50 million trees, the movement also became a symbol for a democratic struggle and a token of peace. According to widespread African tradition, trees are used as white flags during disputes. In Wangari Maathai’s own words: “The tree also became a symbol for peace and conflict resolution, especially during ethnic conflicts in Kenya when the Green Belt Movement used peace trees to reconcile disputing communities.”

In 2004, Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." She was the first African woman to receive the peace prize.

Photo by Micheline Pelletier / Getty Images

07/07/2025

Toni Morrison

06/07/2025

Jadé Fadojutimi received a master’s degree in painting seven years ago, and since then has become one of the most prominent “ultra-contemporary” artists—a term that the art market has coined to designate practitioners born after 1974. Her paintings have been acquired by numerous international institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Tate. In 2022, when she was still not yet 30 years old, she was included in the Venice Biennale. This month Fadojutimi will have her first solo show in New York.

Fadojutimi’s paintings are large in scale: some of her canvases are 10 feet high and 16 feet wide, and she has gone even bigger. Within these ambitious dimensions, she creates intricate works that shimmer on the boundary between abstract and figurative. Amid vibrant gashes, iridescent arcs, and urgent lines, a viewer may discern the contours of leaves, flowers, butterfly wings, waves, or suns. “But Fadojutimi’s swirling images seem to capture a state of mind as much as they do a state of nature,” Rebecca Mead writes. “They are always energetic, and sometimes ecstatic, blooming into color and motion and light.” Read a profile of the artist, whose work is inspired by emotion, anime, and music: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/eRL4y-

06/07/2025

10/06/2025

09/06/2025

"The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism." ~Hannah Arendt

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt: https://amzn.to/449aEMa