About Zora Magazine

Zora&Alice is now Zora Magazine

Zora magazine is the only online magazine for collegiate black women. In addition to covering national content, we are establishing branch networks on various university campuses. We are building a media brand created by, and responsive to the needs of black women in college and beyond. Excited about our new journey? Click here to find out how you can contribute and join.

Our Mission:

• To build communities of young black women
• To provide a virtual ‘front porch’ where black women can converse honestly and openly
• To provide a career launch platform for aspiring collegiate journalists
• To wear power pumps and take over the world like the stone cold forces we know ourselves to be

Our Story:

Next time you’re at your local bookstore, try this: walk to the women’s magazine rack. Find a cover that features a young black woman (sorry Oprah).  Now, eliminate any magazines about hair and try again.  Getting harder? Now take out any covers with people named Beyonce, Rihanna, Keisha, or anyone else who sings for a living. How many magazines do you have left? What – no black girls on the cover of your favorite fashion magazines? Home decor? Film? Art? Well – “black girls don’t do any of those things.” Get over it.

Let’s face it – most of what the newsstands provide for young women is crap. What they offer young black women, when they offer anything at all, is especially stinky. And, for better or worse, in our media-centric world, you are who the media says you are. As a pretty smart guy once said, you’ve got to be the change media you wish to see.

So that’s what Zora&Alice is here to do. Through our blog and monthly magazine,we’re starting a new conversation about black women. The kinds of conversations we have each day with our friends and our sisters. Yes, we talk about our hair sometimes but, to borrow from a gal who’ll never be a media darling but will always be ours, I’m not my hair.

From work to health to relationships to politics, when you’re with your sisters, it all gets talked about. It’s a conversation that doesn’t force you to get in a box and stay there. You’ll sound confident and fragile, hopeful and cynical, silly and serious. Your mood will shift. You’ll contradict yourself. Others may see a girl at odds with herself. We see a girl figuring out herself.

We don’t claim to represent all young black women and our readers won’t always agree with what we write. In fact, we expect to respectfully and intelligently disagree  – that’s the only way to move forward. If you’re looking for evidence to corroborate everything you already ‘know’ about young black women, please move on. If you want to join a conversation in good faith, then, whoever you are, stay and let’s talk.

Our History and Name:

Zora magazine began in 2010 as Zora&Alice, an online magazine for young black women. The original site was named was inspired by the collection I Love Myself When I Am Laughing… And Then Again When I’m Looking Mean and Impressive, an anthology of works by Zora Neale Hurston and edited by Alice Walker.

In 2011, we began to focus exclusively on the college market and became Zora magazine. We are proud to take the name of Zora Neale Hurston, an iconoclast and one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Underappreciated and condemned for her independence, Zora Neale Hurston exuded the qualtiies that we hope for in our readers – independence, fierceness of spirit, …., that inspired countless writers and thinkers that came after her, including the venerable Alice Walker.