Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was an American writer, professor, poet and civil rights activist whose work refused to separate her identities as a Black woman, a lesbian, a mother and a feminist. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978; six years later she learned it had metastasized to her liver, and A Burst of Light collects the journal entries she kept while living with it. From 1991 until her death in 1992 she served as New York State Poet Laureate.