Audre Lorde graduated from Hunter College in New York with a B.A. in 1959 and earned a master's degree in library science at Columbia University in 1961. After working several years as a librarian, Lorde received a National Endowments for the Arts grant in 1968 and became poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. There she met Frances Louise Clayton, who eventually became her partner of nineteen years. Lorde published her first volume of poetry, The First Cities, in 1968. In 1978 she became a professor of English, first at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, and later at Hunter College. Both her poetry and prose have received numerous honors, including nominations for the National Book Award for From a Land Where Other People Live in 1974, the American Library Association's Gay Caucus Book of the Year Award for THE CANCER JOURNALS in 1981, the Manhattan Borough President's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1988, and the American Book Award for A Burst of Light in 1989.