A. Kirsten Mullen

 A. Kirsten Mullen is a folklorist and the founder of Artefactual, an arts-consulting practice, and Carolina Circuit Writers, a literary consortium that brings expressive writers of color to the Carolinas. She was a member of the Freelon Adjaye Bond concept development team that was awarded the Smithsonian Institution’s commission to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Under the auspices of the North Carolina Arts Council she worked to expand the Coastal Folklife Survey. As a faculty member with the Community Folklife Documentation Institute, she trained students to research and record the state’s African American music heritage. Kirsten was a consultant on the North Carolina Museum of History’s “North Carolina Legends” and “Civil Rights” exhibition projects. Her writing in museum catalogs, journals, and in commercial media includes “Black Culture and History Matter” (The American Prospect), which examines the politics of funding black cultural institutions, “American Needs a Better Reparations Plan” (Bloomberg News), and “The Queen Mother,” a look at the life and legacy of black nationalist and reparations advocate Audley Moore (Vanity Fair magazine). She and William A. Darity, Jr. are the authors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-first Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).