Alexis Pauline Gumbs wrote an award-winning biography of Audre Lorde.

Photos: Courtesy Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

“Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde,” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, is a biography of the life and legacy of the iconic Black feminist poet. But it is also a literary work that blends meticulous research with poetic prose. Lorde lived a purposeful life as activist and self-described “warrior” in addition to a life of letters.   Winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction from Publishing Triangle, and a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, “Survival Is a Promise,” published in August 2024, is a bold, innovative work with an innovative structure. The author is a poet herself. Rather than being a linear, chronological story of Lorde’s life, the bo

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