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February 9, 2017 -- Two Los Angeles area authors will read from their works this month as part of Santa Monica Colleges Spring Literary Series, college officials announced Wednesday.

The free series -- sponsored by the SMC Associates (www.smc.edu/associates) and the SMC English Department -- kicks off Wednesday, February 22 with a reading and conversation with award-winning poet Harryette Mullen.

A UCLA English professor, Mullen is best known for her fifth poetry collection “Sleeping with the Dictionary,” which finds the poet "collaborating with Roget's Thesaurus and The American Heritage Dictionary.

Critics have hailed Mullen's poetry as "unique, powerful, and challenging," according to the Poetry Foundation.

In the journal "Contemporary Literature," Elisabeth A. Frost wrote, "Crossing the lines between often isolated aesthetic camps, Harryette Mullen has pioneered her own form of bluesy, disjunctive lyric poetry, combining a concern for the political issues raised by identity politics with a poststructualist emphasis on language."

Mullen's awards include a Jackson Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a United States Artist Fellowship. She will read selections from her works, which "have been published widely and reprinted in more than 100 anthologies, including the Best American Poetry anthology series," organizers said.

The event takes place at 6:30 p.m. in Humanities & Social Sciences Lecture Hall 104.

On Tuesday, April 25, Award-winning writer and SMC English professor Siel Ju will read selections from her novel-in-stories “Cake Time.”

The author of two poetry chapbooks and numerous published short stories, Ju was awarded a residency from The Anderson Center at Tower View and Vermont Studio Center, event organizers said.

The reading takes place at 11:15 a.m. in Humanities & Social Science Lecture Hall 165.

For information, call SMC’s Office of Public Programs at (310) 434-4100.