The Poetry and Poetics Colloquium presents a reading by poets Erica Mullen and Harryette Mullen.

Harryette Mullen’s books include Tree Tall Woman (1981), Trimmings (1991), S*PeRM**K*T (1992), Muse & Drudge (1995)—the latter three of which were collected into her most recent book, Recyclopedia (Graywolf, 2006) which received a PEN Beyond Margins Award. In 2002, she published both Blues Baby: Early Poems and Sleeping with the Dictionary, a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry.

Mullen was the 2009 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. Her other honors include artist grants from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, and a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester. Harryette Mullen teaches African-American literature and creative writing in the English Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Erica Hunt is a U.S. poet, essayist, teacher, mother, and organizer from New York City. She is often associated with the group of Language poets from her days living in San Francisco in the late 1970s and early 80s, but her work is also considered central to the avant garde black aesthetic developing after the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements. Through the 1990s and 2000s, Hunt worked with several non-profits that encourage black philanthropy for black communities and causes. From 1999 to 2010, she was executive director of the 21st Century Foundation located in Harlem. Currently, she is devoting herself full-time to writing.