The Poetry and Poetics Colloquium is thrilled to announce that poet and literary scholar Harryette Mullen (UCLA) and poet, essayist, and community organizer Erica Hunt will be visiting for an evening reading on Tuesday, February 5th, and a lunchtime workshop on Wednesday, the 6th.

Erica Hunt is the author of three books of poetry, Arcade (with artist Alison Saar), Piece Logic and Local History. Her essay, “Notes for an Oppositional Poetics” in Charles Bernstein’s The Politics of Poetic Form, put her in the forefront of experimental poets. She has received fellowships from the Blue Mountain Center and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and a 2001 grant for poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. A leading expert on Black social justice and economic issues and the 2008 recipient of Spelman College’s award for National Community Service, she was executive director of the 21st Century Foundation located in Harlem from 1999 to 2010.

Harryette Mullen is a poet and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing and African-American literature. She is the author of Sleeping with the Dictionary, a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award, as well as numerous other books of poetry, including S*PeRM**K*T, Muse & Drudge, and Blues Baby. She is also the author of the critical study “Freeing the Soul: Race, Subjectivity and Difference in Slave Narratives.” In 2010 Mullen was awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize by Poets and Writers Magazine.