About the Author:

HARRYETTE MULLEN is a poet and professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned a BA from the University of Texas and a PhD from the University of California Santa Cruz. Her collections of poetry include S*PeRM**K*T (1992), Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), Recyclopedia (2006), and Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary (2012). Her various honors and awards include fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester. She was also the recipient of a Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry. She describes her work as “writing for the eye and the ear at once, at the intersection of orality and literacy” (The Poetry Foundation).