Audre Lorde ’51, was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. Audrey Geraldine Lorde was born on February 18, 1934 to Frederic and Linda Belmar Lorde, immigrants from Grenada. She was the youngest of three sisters and grew up in Manhattan. As a child, Lorde dropped the “y” from her first name to become Audre.
Lorde connected with poetry from a young age. She once commented, “I used to speak in poetry…when I couldn’t find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that’s what started me writing poetry.” She was around 12 or 13 at the time. She graduated from Hunter High School, where she edited the literary magazine. After an English teacher rejected one of her poems, Lorde submitted it to Seventeen magazine – it became her first professional publication.
After working a variety of jobs in New York and Connecticut, Lorde studied for a year at the National University of Mexico in Cuernavaca. It was there that she grew confident in her identity as both a lesbian and a poet. Lorde then earned her bachelor’s degree from Hunter College and a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University. She worked as a librarian in New York City public schools from 1961-1968. Click link to read more https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/audre-lorde
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan Ph.D. ’99, is the author of three books: the novel Big Girl, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel and the Balcones Fiction Prize; Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary; and The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the MLA. She has earned honors from Bread Loaf, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Fiction, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Originally from Harlem, NY, Mecca is a Professor of English at Georgetown University and lives in Washington DC. Some students and faculty may remember that Mecca spoke to us at our 2023 Convocation. Click link to read more https://www.meccajamilahsullivan.com/
