Audre Lorde (1934–1992) Power LINKS Voices from the Gaps: Audre Lorde http://www-engl.cla.umn.edu/lkd/vfg/Authors/AudreLorde From Voices From the Gaps, an instructional site from the University of Minnesota focusing on the lives and works of women writers of color, the page on Lorde includes a brief biography, a useful bibliography, and a list of links to other related sites. BIOGRAPHY Audre Lorde (1934–1992) Born to middle-class, West Indian immigrant parents in New York City, Lorde grew up in Harlem and attended the National University of Mexico (1954), Hunter College (B.A., 1959) and Columbia (M.L.S., 1961). Her marriage in 1962, which produced two children, ended in divorce in 1970. During these early years, she worked as a librarian, but in 1968 her growing reputation as a writer led to her appointment as lecturer in creative writing at City College in New York and, in the following year, lecturer in the education department at Herbert H. Lehman College. In 1970, she joined the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and in 1980 returned to Hunter College as professor of English. Besides teaching, Lorde combined raising a son and a daughter in an interracial lesbian relationship with political organizing of other black feminists and lesbians, and in the early 1980s, helped to start Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. In 1991, she was named New York State Poet. Lorde is probably best known for her prose writings, among them two collections of essays, Sister Outsider (1984) and Burst of Light (1988), and the autobiographical Zami: The Cancer Journals (1980), a chronicle of her struggle with the breast cancer that ultimately claimed her life. Her poetry publications include The First Cities (1968), The Black Unicorn (1978), and Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New (1993). Near the end of her life, Lorde made her home on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, and adopted the African name Gamba Adisa ("Warrior—She Who Makes Her Meaning Known").