Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Co-Director of the MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing program at the George Polk School of Communications at Long Island University Brooklyn. Dr. Banerjee is the editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press), and the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press), which was nominated for the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize at the Academy of American Poets, named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018”, and was selected by Finishing Line Press as their 2018 nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry. Dr. Banerjee is also the author of the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press). She is co-editor of the forthcoming speculative literature anthology Disobedient Futures from the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, and she is the co-writer and co-director of Burning Down the Louvre (2022), a documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France. She recently received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this new memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays.

Rita Banerjee received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and she is a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Artist’s Grant, the Tom and Laurel Nebel Fellowship, and South Asia Initiative and Tata Grants. Her work has appeared on-air on Vermont Public Radio, The Ruth Stone House Foundation’s Podcast, Goddard College Community Radio’s Bon Mot, and KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and in print in the Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, Hunger Mountain, PANK, Nat. Brut., Isele Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Riot Grrrl Magazine, The Fiction Project, Objet d’Art, and elsewhere.

Prior to joining the George Polk School of Communications at LIU Brooklyn, Dr. Banerjee directed the residential MFA in Writing & Publishing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has taught on creative writing, world literature, South Asian modernisms, and avant-garde film at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, Ludwig- Maximilian University of Munich, University of Washington, Fordham University, and at Rutgers University. She has also taught creative writing workshops and craft of writing seminars, and has run writing retreats through the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop in France and Spain, Ruth Stone House in Vermont, Weehawken Writer’s Studio in New Jersey, Powerful Writers/Pipeline Project in Seattle, the Kalam Project in Calcutta, and at the Munich Readery in Germany. She served as the judge for the 2020 Sustainable Montpelier “What Comes Next?” Writing Competition, 2019 Vermont Poetry Out Loud State Championship at PBS Studios (Vermont), the judge for the 2019 Spider Road Press Flash Fiction Contest, and the judge for the 2017 Minerva Rising “Dare to Speak” Poetry Chapbook Contest.

In 2008, she co-founded the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop at Harvard University with Diana Norma Szokolyai and serves as its Executive Creative Director. She is an Associate Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and an Editor-at- Large of the South Asian Avant-Garde. She is currently working on a novel, a book on South Asian literary modernisms, and a memoir and manifesto about how young women of color keep their cool against social, sexual, and economic pressure. Her writing is represented by agents Jeff Kleinman and Jamie Chambliss of Folio Literary Management.

Education

Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Harvard University

A.M., Comparative Literature, Harvard University

M.F.A., Creative Writing, University of Washington

B.A. (Honors), English Honors, Rutgers University Minors: Japanese; Cinema Studies

Courses Taught

  • History of Genre(s)
  • Theory of Craft and Criticism
  • Narrative Forms from World Literature
  • Nonfiction Workshop
  • Poetry Workshop
  • Revision Workshop
  • Pedagogy for Creative Writers
  • MFA Thesis & Faculty Advising