Harryette Mullen (born July 1, 1953), Professor of English at University of California, Los Angeles,[1] is an American poet, short story writer, and literary scholar.

[3] Mullen began to write poetry as a college student in a multicultural community of writers, artists, musicians, and dancers in Austin, Texas.

As an emerging poet, Mullen received a literature award from the Black Arts Academy, a Dobie-Paisano writer’s fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters and University of Texas, and an artist residency from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico.

Critics, including Elisabeth Frost and Juliana Spahr, have suggested that Mullen’s poetry audience is an eclectic community of collaborative readers who share individual and collective interpretations of poems that may provoke multiple, divergent, or contradictory meanings, according to each reader’s cultural background.

[7] She appears in the documentary film The Black Candle, directed by M. K. Asante, Jr. and narrated by Maya Angelou.

[citation needed] Language is the bridge that can connect two different cultures, and Mullen experienced the opposite of that when she was growing up at first.

[citation needed] Even in the black community where she should feel "safe" in or "belong," Mullen felt alienated.

[citation needed] In 2011, Barbara Henning published a collection of postcard interviews with the author, titled: Looking Up Harryette Mullen (Belladonna).