Audre Lorde was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights, activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to address the injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia.

As a poet, she is best known for specialized mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that portray anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she identified throughout her life.

Lorde's poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s – in Langston Hughes' 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in various foreign anthologies; and in black literary magazines. During this time, she also had active participation in civil rights, anti-war, and feminist movements.

Lorde's poetry became more open and personal as she grew older and became more optimistic about her sexuality.

In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Lorde states, "Poetry is the way we help give a name to the nameless so it can be thought... As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring ideas."

Her poems and prose primarily deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity.

Her writings are on the "theory of difference", the idea that the binary opposition between men and women is extremely simplistic; although feminists have found it crucial to present the illusion of a solid, unified whole, the category of women itself is full of subdivisions.

Lorde identified issues of race, class, age and ageism, sex and sexuality and, later in her life, chronic illness and disability; the latter becoming more central in her later years as she lived with cancer. She remains an inspiration to many women writers.