This document from the archive is a 1971 flyer for a series of readings and workshops featuring Audre Lorde and sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Betty Kray, then the executive director of the Academy of American Poets, reached out to Lorde in December 1970 to ask for her involvement in this new program. Lorde was excited to get involved in the program, which was aimed toward students in middle school and high school.
On the inside of the flyer, Lorde includes a biographical note that gives a sense of her dedication to identity politics: “I am Black, Woman, and Poet—fact, and outside the realm of choice. I can choose only to be or not be, and in various combinations of myself. And as my breath is a part of my breathing, my eyes of my seeing, all that I am is of who I am, is of what I do.”