Harryette Mullen (photo: Judy Natal)

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series will feature Harryette Mullen for a reading from her latest poetry at noon on March 18 in the Ferguson Center Forum on The University of Alabama campus.

“Given the stress some critics have put on the way the lines ‘skirt the edges of meaning,’ I would assert that I intend the poem to be meaningful: to allow, or suggest, to open up, or insinuate possible meanings, even in those places where the poem drifts between intentional utterance and improvisational wordplay, between comprehensible statements and the pleasures of sound itself,” Mullen said about her poetry.

Born in Florence and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Mullen’s books of poetry include “Sleeping with the Dictionary,” “Muse & Drudge,” “S*PeRM**K*T,” “Trimmings,” and “Tree Tall Woman.”

Mullen’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines including Agni Review, Antioch Review, Black Renaissance, Bombay Gin, Chain, Epoch, Furnitures, Hambone, Hole, La Jornada Semanal, Parnassus, Proliferation, Voice Literary Supplement, and The World.

Her poems and short fiction have been widely collected, most recently in “Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women,” “Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American Poetry,” and “African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology.”

Her 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.

Mullen teaches African-American literature and creative writing in the English department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series is made possible by an endowment from the Bankhead Foundation, The University of Alabama’s Program in Creative Writing, the department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information, please contact the creative writing program at 205/348-0766 or visit www.bama.ua.edu/~writing.