Laura Mullen

1958 –
Read poems by this poet

Laura Mullen was born in Los Angeles in 1958. She received her BA in English from University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. 

Mullen is the author of several books of poetry, most recently EtC (Solid Objects 2023); Complicated Grief (Solid Objects, 2015); Enduring Freedom: A Little Book of Mechanical Brides (Otis Books, 2012); and Dark Archive (University of California Press, 2011). Her first book, The Surface (University of Illinois Press, 1991), was chosen as a National Poetry Series selection.

Mullen is the recipient of Ironwood Press’s Frank Stanford Prize and a Rona Jaffe Award, as well as fellowships from MacDowell and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mullen taught creative writing at the University of Miami, Colorado State University, and Louisiana State University, where she was the McElveen Professor in English. She has been a visiting poet at Brown University, Columbia College, Stetson University, Naropa University, and Colby College. She held the William R. Kenan Chair in the Humanities at Wake Forest from 2021 to 2023. She lives in California.