Image in feature by Robert Alexander via Getty Images

You wake up slumped over a large table, your face in a book. You quickly banish memories of late night study sessions and try to make sense of the surroundings. There is a deliberate hush around the place, and bookshelves in every direction. You are quite glad to be chilling in a library after all your recent antics.

You see a woman carrying piles of books, crossing the library from one end to the other trying to find where they should go. When she has a break, she hurries back to her own desk where she’s working on what looks like poetry. You realise it’s Audre Lorde, and she is trying to write her first volume of poetry, The First Cities, while also working as a librarian!

You...