Reading Groups

In Short: Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name with Laurie Lambert

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Saturday, 11:30 am EDT - 1:00 pm EDT November 8, 2025

The Center for Fiction

Registration includes a complimentary drink from our Café & Bar. The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

A queer, Black feminist poet, scholar, activist, and mother, Audre Lorde was born in Harlem in 1934 to West Indian parents. With Zami, she invents a genre—the biomythography—to narrate her childhood and coming-of-age as a lesbian, taking readers from Harlem to Greenwich Village in the 1950s. We will explore queerness and race, Lorde’s connection to the Caribbean diaspora, and her quest to find herself in community.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read Audre Lorde’s Zami in its entirety.

What to expect from this reading group: This will be a discussion-based group, where participants are encouraged to share their views. The instructor will moderate the conversation, offering context and framing questions.

Reading List:

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde

Upcoming Programming: Discuss more literature from writers of the Caribbean diaspora with Laurie Lambert in her single-session In Short: Wide Sargasso Sea on September 4th.

Led by

Laurie Lambert

Laurie Lambert

Laurie Lambert is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University, where her teaching includes Black Feminism and Caribbean Literature and History.

About this series

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Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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