Ariel Gore


Ariel Gore is a journalist, memoirist, novelist, nonfiction author, and teacher. Gore has authored more than ten novels. Gore's fiction and nonfiction work also explores creativity, spirituality, queer culture, and positive psychology. She is the founding editor/publisher of Hip Mama, an Alternative Press Award-winning publication covering the culture and politics of motherhood. Through her work on Hip Mama, Gore is widely credited with launching maternal feminism and the contemporary mothers' movement.
Her anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City won the best "LGBT anthology" at the 22nd annual Lambda Literary Award in 2010.

Early life and education

Ariel Gore was born June 25, 1970, in Carmel, California. Her mother was Eve de Bona, and the subject of her book The End of Eve. Her stepfather John Duryea, was a priest that had been excommunicated in 1976 by the Catholic Church when he confessed in a sermon he had fallen in love with Gore's mother. She was raised in Palo Alto, California and attended Addison Elementary School, Jordan Middle School and two years at Palo Alto High School. She left high school early by taking the California High School Proficiency Test. In her book, Atlas of the Human Heart, Gore recounts this time period in her life after high school at age 15, where she traveled the world, working odd jobs, and squatting abandoned buildings.
She is a graduate of Mills College and the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. While attending Mills College in the 1990s, Gore was a young, single mom raising her daughter.

Work

Hip Mama

The first issue of Hip Mama was by Ariel Gore and published in December, 1993, in Oakland, California as part of her senior project while attending Mills College. Published quarterly, the magazine relocated to Portland, Oregon in the 1990s. It was created as a forum for single, urban, and feminist mothers. Each issue had a broad theme and within that theme the content would explore various aspects and a range of ideas.
In 2014, Hip Mama moved back to Oakland and relaunched with expanded food, arts, and political coverage. "It's the quality of the writing that sets Hip Mama apart," noted in The New Yorker.

''Atlas of the Human Heart'' (1998)

Her lyrical memoir, Atlas of the Human Heart, which recounts Gore's teenage years and her travels. This book was a 2004 finalist for the Oregon Book Award.

Teaching

She has taught as a faculty fellow at The Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland, Oregon, University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She currently teaches online at Ariel Gore's School for Wayward Writers.

Personal life

Gore is openly queer and has two children, a daughter and a son. After living in Portland, Oregon for many years, Gore and her family moved to Oakland, California in approximately 2014.
Gore's daughter Maia Swift has worked as an art director for her mother's, Hip Mama magazine and helped her co-author Whatever, Mom: Hip Mama's Guide to Raising a Teenager.

Nonfiction