Margaret Jewell Mullen was born in 1909 in Emporia, Kansas, to James Ralph and Edna Keith Jewell. In 1913, when James Ralph Jewell was named Dean of the College of Education at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, the family relocated to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Mullen would grow up. After graduating from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 1927, she moved with her family to Oregon. She undertook graduate work at Oregon State College, the University of Wisconsin, Bennington College and Mills, as well as studio training in New York. She danced and taught at San Jose State, Mills College, and Stanford University. Since her retirement, she has taken up writing and tutoring. An Arkansas Childhood, where Mullen recounts growing up in Fayetteville (1913-1927), is her first book. Her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and journals.