Tag: Essayist

Audre Lorde, Poet

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Audre Geraldine Lorde was born on February 1934 in New York City, and went on to become a leading African-American poet and essayist who gave voice to issues of race, gender and sexuality.

Lorde’s love of poetry started at a young age, and she began writing as a teenager.  She attended Hunter College, working to support herself through school.  After graduating in 1959, she went on to get a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University in 1961 and was head librarian at Town School Library in New York City.

‘The Black Unicorn’ (1978), a volume in which Lorde explored her African heritage, is considered one of her greatest works by many critics.  In addition to poetry, Lorde was a powerful essayist and writer.

In terms of her nonfiction work, Lorde is best remembered for ‘The Cancer Journals’ (1980) in which she documents her own struggle with breast cancer.  She died November 1992 on the US island of St. Croix.

Information from The Biography.com website  https://www.biography.com/scholar/audre-lorde

Citation Information

Article Title
Audre Lorde Biography

Author
Biography.com Editors

Website Name
The Biography.com website

Access Date
November 27, 2019

Publisher
A&E Television Networks

Last Updated
April 16, 2019

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Novelist Marguerite Yourcenar said…

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Marguerite Yourcenar, or Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour, was a French novelist and essayist born in Brussels, Belgium, who became a US citizen in 1947. Winner of the Prix Femina and Erasmus Prize, in 1980 she was the first woman elected to the Académie Française. Her most notable work is historical novel “‎Mémoires d’Hadrien” (Memoirs of Hadrian) and I have read “Denier du Rêve” (retitled A Coin in Nine Hands) set in 1933 over one day in Rome where a ten-lira coin passes through the hands of nine unusual people https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marguerite-Yourcenar The flower buds are Dianella caerulea (commonly known as the blue flax-lily) which turn into small green then purple berries and it grows in a terracotta pot near my kitchen door. GBW.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward