Molly Larkey is a Los Angeles based artist whose work combines elements of language, painting, sculpture, architecture, and craft, using fluidity of form and function to propose alternatives to existing social systems. For Larkey, artworks are objects that convey meaning through their physical presence, and thereby impact the way that the body relates to the physical world. In her art, she suggests ways to imagine a world in which beneficial structures replace ones based in alienation and control. In 2019, she founded People’s Pottery Project, an artist-driven initiative whose mission is to empower formerly incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary individuals through the arts.

Audrey Geraldine Lorde was born on February 18, 1934, to immigrant parents from Grenada. She grew up in Manhattan and was the youngest of three sisters. As a young girl, when Audre had trouble expressing what she was feeling, she quoted poetry. By the age of 12, she started writing her own poetry. In high school, she became the editor of the literary magazine. Her first professional publication happened after her English teacher rejected one of her poems; she then submitted it to Seventeen magazine where it got published. Audre earned her Bachelor’s degree at Hunter College and a Master’s degree in library science from Columbia University. From 1961-1968, she worked as a librarian in New York City public schools. During that time, Audre published her poetry in various magazines and anthologies while remaining active in women’s liberation, antiwar and civil rights movements. Through the 70s and 80s, Lorde published successful anthologies like: Cables to Rage, From a Land Where Other People Live, The Black Unicorn and most notably, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Later in her career, Audre became a professor of English at Hunter College and at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In 1991, she received the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit, which made her the Poet Laureate of the State of New York. Lorde passed away from cancer in 1992 at the age of 58. Posthumously, the Publishing Triangle association created the Audre Lorde Award for distinguished works of lesbian poetry.