She is the author of Armor and Flesh (Lotus Press), and the forthcoming books Big House / Disclosure and Four Electric Ghosts (1913 Press). Recent installations of her collaborative work include Big House / Disclosure, American Cypher (currently exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem), and African Metropole. Mendi has been awarded a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship and a postdoctoral fellowship in Race and Ethnicity from Princeton University, as well as fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation for Poetry and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Mendi is a poetry editor at Fence Magazine, an artist-in residence at the Tribeca Performing Art Center, and an Assistant Professor in Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. She earned a BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in literature from Duke University.