Rita Mookerjee

Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Iowa State University. She teaches courses on BIWOC feminisms, queer studies, and intersectionality. She holds a PhD from Florida State University and a Master's from Temple University. A scholar of Caribbean literature, her research interests include food, sex, and labor. Her critical work has been featured in the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory, and the Routledge Companion to Food and Literature. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Hobart Pulp, New Orleans Review, The Offing, and the Baltimore Review. Rita is the Assistant Poetry Editor of Split Lip Magazine, and a poetry staff reader for [PANK]. In 2020, she co-founded Honey Literary with Dorothy Chan where she now serves as editor of Poetry as well as Sex, Kink, and the Erotic.

Early Life
Rita Mookerjee is from a small, rural town called Bloomsburg, PA.

Goals
She is working to place her full-length poetry collection right now. Her research currently involves queer theory and critical eating studies. "'I want to help the latter grow so that it can be recognized as a field of study in its own right.'"

Inspirations
"' I operate out of the literary traditions of women of color who paved the way for writers in diaspora like myself. '"

Publications
“Common Era” and “Shrine.” Hobart Pulp. Online.

“Portrait of Sujata Who Never Dresses Down.” Indicia.

“To Protect Your Children, You Need a Drawer of Hair and Teeth.” Bluebottle Review.

“In 1991, Your Letter Predicts the Future.” Maudlin House.

“Rooh Afza.” The Baltimore Review.

“I Grew Eyes at the Nape of My Neck.” SWWIM Every Day.

“Biomythography.” Saranac Review.

“False Offering” and “First Day As a Ghost.” New Orleans Review.

“In Diaspora.” Pretty Owl Poetry.

“If I Could Rename My Town, I’d Call It Lost” and “Shoes in My House: An Allegory.”

Juked.

“In Spite of My Lavender.” Tampa Review.

Chaps: Becoming the Bronze Idol. Bone and Ink Press. 2019.

Protections Rituals. Drum Machine Editions. 2020.