Rita Banerjee – Rita Banerjee

September 19, 2026September 21, 2026

Disobedient Futures: An Anthology (UPK, May 4, 2027) Cover Reveal & Pre-Order Page Launches

We are delighted to present the cover reveal and pre-order page for DISOBEDIENT FUTURES: AN ANTHOLOGY (University Press of Kentucky, May 4, 2027).

DISOBEDIENT FUTURES, edited by Rita Banerjee, Diana Norma Szokolyai, and Corrine Previte, is a speculative literature anthology that imagines what the future cultures of America and the world might look like through a diverse, inclusive, and multi-genre lens. The anthology includes fiction, poetry, nonfiction, hybrid work, art, and photography that explore utopian, dystopian, and alternative realities, futuristic places, and parallel histories through the perspectives of disobedient gender, disobedient identities, disobedient class, disobedient borders, and disobedient environmentalism. DISOBEDIENT FUTURES aims to foster new modes of critical inquiry and invites readers to play and imagine thought-provoking and more inclusive possibilities for the future.

Cover Art Credits: Shanta Lee Honeycutt* & Jamie McKee

*The image featured on the cover, “Take Me To Where Souls Get Snatched” (2021), is original photography by Shanta Lee Honeycutt within her series and previous exhibition, Dark Goddess. Learn more by visiting Shantalee.com.

Featured Authors & Artists:

Preorder DISOBEDIENT FUTURES: AN ANTHOLOGY here now: https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781985905245/disobedient-futures/

About the Editors:

Rita Banerjee is associate professor of creative writing and director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is coeditor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing and author of Echo in Four Beats, A Night with Kali, and Cracklers at Night. Banerjee is also cowriter of the documentary film Burning Down the Louvre. She cofounded and serves as executive creative director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.

Diana Norma Szokolyai is a writer, teacher, and interdisciplinary artist. She is coeditor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing and author of Parallel Sparrows and Roses in the Snow. Her poetry has appeared in The Boston Globe, Critical Romani Studies, and The Poetry Miscellany. She cofounded and serves as executive artistic director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.

Corrine Previte is a writer and educator living inBoston’s North Shore. Her work has appeared in Wanderlust Journal.Previte holds an M.Ed in English as a Second Language and Structured Literacy from Gordon College and serves as manager of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She is currently working on her first children’s book.

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March 21, 2026March 21, 2026

Rita Banerjee’s essay “American Caste” debuts in Isele Magazine (March 2026)

Rita Banerjee’s essay “American Caste” debuts in Isele Magazine’s first special issue of 2026. The essay will also be featured and anthologized in Disobedient Futures (University Press of Kentucky, 2027).

Founded in July 2020 by Nigerian novelist Ukamaka Olisakwe, Isele Magazine publishes notable fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, art/photography, and reviews from writers on the African continent and around the world. Isele believes that literature and the arts are an integral part of the daily conversations that uplift and/or shape our thinking. Isele publishes writers and artists who hold a mirror to our society, who challenge conventional expectations about ways of being, how to be, and who decides who should be.

Rita Banerjee’s essay “American Caste” explores the various kinds of caste systems, or social hierarchies, which invisibly structure, stratify, and thus, harm American society. In the essay, she writes:

There’s an old saying in India: “If you move across oceans, you lose all caste.” The dictum is meant to be a presage, a warning to those who seek the riches and adventures of outside worlds and once there, lose their foothold in society, or when returning home, find themselves a stranger in a stranger’s land.

Cross the dark waters and lose all varṇa—lose all indication of status, wealth, social rank, prestige, privilege, and power. Lose the language of home, lose its logic, lose the understanding of supremacy and subordination, lose the sense of right action, lose wrong thought.

When my father moved to the United States in 1973 as a young graduate from engineering school and then married my mother in 1976 and brought her back to New York with him (thus, abruptly halting her graduate studies and what might have been a prosperous career in academia), I like to think, in some sort of unconscious, subversive, maybe even self-destructive way, what my parents were fleeing was not war or communism or difficult financial circumstances or a democracy trying to grow through the stinging shards of post-colonialism, but what they subconsciously were escaping was caste.

To be a Brahmin in India was to acknowledge (if one dared) both your great privilege as keepers of sacred knowledge (as conveyers of grammar, astronomy, mathematics, statecraft, social mores, philosophy, and theories of art and human behavior) across generations, and your incredible complicity in the social violence that is the Indian caste system.

The first acknowledgement celebrated high culture and the triumph of Brahmanism across millennia in the face of challenges from Buddhism, Jainism, Cārvāka materialism, and Bhaktism (all of which sought to dismantle caste), and in the face of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity, and Judaism (which offered South Asians alternative models to achieve enlightenment). The second asked Brahmins to interrogate what was behind their lofty, aspirational, and supposedly innocuous ideal of “knowledge is power.”

* * *

In Caste Matters, Suraj Yengde writes, “caste should no longer be invisible” (35).

Caste, in its most basic form and intent, identifies, venerates, and calcifies social hierarchies. By capitalizing on the fear of the other, caste systems hinder social mobility and aim to prevent people from mixing across tribal, class, gender, religious, linguistic, and ability categories. By being encoded into social stigmas and taboos and being systemic in nature, caste often functions as an “invisible” force that makes us fear anyone who is unlike us. Caste makes us suspect anyone who exists outside of our spectrum of knowledge, culture, or kin. By consolidating socio-political power to those who have the most cultural capital or are perceived to be of the highest social rank, caste allows the few to benefit from the oppression, exploitation, and sacrifices of the many.

Read the full version of Rita Banerjee’s essay “American Caste” in Isele Magazine here.

October 1, 2025April 4, 2026

“How to Survive as a Writer Under American Capitalism” Reading & Talk by Rita Banerjee – University of North Dakota * October 7, 7pm CT on Zoom

Dr. Rita Banerjee will be reading from her personal essay “American Caste” and presenting a short lecture on “How to Survive as a Writer under American Capitalism” for the University of North Dakota Virtual Speakers Series in Writing, Editing, & Publishing on Tuesday, October 7 at 7 pm CT via Zoom. Audience members can join the Zoom webinar by scanning the QR Code above. And here’s more information about the talk:

How to Survive as a Writer under American Capitalism

In the 21^st Century, creative writers in the United States are facing unprecedented challenges to their discipline, craft, and survival. In 2025 alone, writers have witnessed large cuts in government funding for universities and humanities departments, the suspension of the NEA Fellowship for Creative Writers, and a number of class-action lawsuits against Artificial Intelligence companies, such as Bartz vs. Anthropic, in which A.I. companies are accused of illegally downloading 7.5 million literary and scholarly books and 81 million research papers to train their Large Language Model systems.[1] In this era of late capitalism, how can writers find viable ways to maintain and grow in their craft, seek the education in the humanities they desire, and create sustainable careers and communities in creative writing? As a multi-genre writer who is deeply inspired by world literature and transnationalism, Dr. Rita Banerjee will discuss her journey as a writer and literary citizen, and will share resources on how creative writers can create sustainable, nurturing, and viable careers, writing practices, and literary communities despite the pressures of American capitalism.

About the Author:

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She is editor of the forthcoming anthology Disobedient Futures (University Press of Kentucky) in which writers imagine what the future cultures of the United States and the world could look like if folks disobeyed gender, tribal, and class paradigms, and explored disobedient forms of environmentalism and borders. She is also the author of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, the poetry collections Echo in Four Beats and Cracklers at Night, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and is co-writer of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, tribalism, and intimacy in the United States and in France. Her work appears in Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition, Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, which she co-founded at Harvard in 2008. She received a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the book’s opening chapters “Birth of Cool,” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter, “The Female Gaze,” was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.

[1] Reisner, Alex. “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated Book Problem.” The Atlantic. Online. March 20, 2025.

February 10, 2025

What the Universe Is Reading feat. Rita Banerjee & Amanda Shaw – February 11, 2025 * 7:30 pm EST on Zoom

Poet Michael Mercurio hosts and curates “What the Universe Is,” a poetry reading series featuring poets and writers Rita Banerjee and Amanda Shaw reading at 7:30 pm EST on Tuesday, February 11, 2025. Register for the reading on Zoom and join the reading live at: bit.ly/WTUIFeb2025! And here’s more information about the reading & writers below:

Make some time for poetry during this shortest of months. Come hear two exceptional poets read for you on Zoom, so you don’t have to leave the house in these cold & dark days. Let these poets bring you light & warmth!

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is author of Disobedient Futures, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, Echo in Four Beats, “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night, and co-writer of the documentary Burning Down the Louvre. Her work appears in Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She received a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the book’s opening chapters “Birth of Cool,” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter, “The Female Gaze,” was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.

Amanda Shaw is the author of It Will Have Been So Beautiful (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024). Based in Washington, DC, she is a teacher and editor at the World Bank and other international organizations. Her poems have appeared in LEON Literary Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, and Lily Poetry Review, which she recently joined as the reviews editor. Over the last 25 years, she has taught students of all ages and backgrounds in New York, Boston, Detroit, and Rome, Italy.

It’s very easy to register at bit.ly/WTUIFeb2025 — make sure you don’t miss out!

February 10, 2025February 11, 2025

January 2025 Faculty Lectures from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College Now Available

The MFA Program for Writers recently celebrated its annual winter residency this past January. The residency featured inspiring lectures and classes from both faculty and graduating students. And writers and readers can access the wonderful craft discussions and lectures from the MFA Program for Writers faculty online here. All MFA Store proceeds directly support graduate student scholarships in the MFA Program for Writers.

Rita Banerjee’s Opening Lecture, “The Poetry and Power of Witness” asks, “How do we as writers process the various kinds of social trauma that inform and affect our daily lives?” In Against Forgetting, Carolyn Forché argues against an easy descent into forgetfulness or a culture of oblivion as espoused a constant carousel of rotating news headlines. She instead introduces the notion of “poem as trace, poem as evidence” and how the work of a writer can serve as a witness to and record of history. And in her introduction to Playing in the dark, Toni Morrison writes that, “Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability.” Some authors, studied in this talk, who wrestle with both their response and responsibility as witness to their particular social and historical moment, include Carolyn Forché, Solmaz Sharif, Fatimah Ashgar, Paul Celan, George Abraham, Noor Hindi, Jo Ann Beard, Yoko Tawada, Julio Cortázar, Agyeya, James Baldwin, Carvell Wallace, and Carl Phillips.

The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 – January 2025, and can be accessed here: https://www.wwcmfa.org/store/

December 24, 2024February 11, 2025

South Asian Avant-Garde’s 2024 in Reading feat. Rita Banerjee

In describing the complex and thought-provoking readings of the SAAG Masthead in 2024, Associate Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde Iman Iftikhar writes, “Reading in 2024 often felt like fumbling for grounding amidst relentless upheaval. At times, it offered escape and solace. At others, it demanded grappling, interrogation, and a necessary confrontation. Whether through poetry, history, fiction, or essays, our reading this year insisted on engagement: on seeing, feeling, and remembering to live, even when it felt unbearable.

“These reflections do not aim to present a neat list of 2024’s ‘best; books or ‘essential reads.’ Instead, they are fragments of what stayed with us: works that lingered and called us back. Our favorites include a novel set in Baltimore tracing the lives of the Palestinian diaspora, texts that provide much needed clarity on revolutionary politics, a quiet yet searing study of sound and space, some comfort reads, and much more. These books held mirrors to the year and world we lived through, compelling us to look even closer when we could not look away. Here, in the voices of those who read and felt with these works, we share not only our most loved reads of the year but the struggles they opened up for us, allowing us to see anew.”

And of her selected readings in 2024, SAAG Editor Rita Banerjee writes:

“This year, every book I read felt like a knock-out including: Animal by Dorothea Lasky, Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, Letters to a Writer of Color edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro, Fling Diction by Frances Canon, Riambel by Priya Hein, Dumb Luck and Other Poems by Christine Kitano, Letter to the Father by Franz Kafka, Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace, Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen, A Fish Growing Lungs by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn, and The Psychology of Supremacy by Dwight Turner, among many others. Each book I read challenged and changed my approach to creative writing craft, human psychology, how we process social trauma, and what we can learn from community, as well as demanding systemic change.

One poetry collection that showed me how form could explode on the page, and how polyvocality and the acknowledgement of our ancestors could be conveyed, was JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies. The collection plays with the idea of “Master of Ceremonies” as someone who both entertains and has authority over the stage. With his stutter, Ellis has difficulty pronouncing ‘master’ (which then becomes ‘aster’ in his work). Throughout the collection, Ellis interrogates the notion of master, both as the figurehead who controls the lives of others, often under authoritarian or tyrannical rule, and as a symbol of accomplishment and the mastery of craft.”

Check out the South Asian Avant-Garde‘s 2024 in Reading here.

April 29, 2023May 16, 2023

KCAW Raven Radio’s “The Library Show feat. Rita Banerjee” airs May 7, 2023 – 10:30 am AKDT

During the the Tongass Mist Writing Retreat (April 12-16, 2023) in Sitka, Alaska, Visiting Rita Banerjee sat down with Brooke Shafer, one of the hosts of “The Library Show” on Raven Radio (KCAW, 104.7 FM Sitka, Alaska). Brooke Shafer asked Rita Banerjee about her favorite books, current reads, what drew her to writing, what it’s like to teach creative writing, and the memoir and manifesto on female cool that she currently working on. Banerjee also got a chance to read from “Cool as Kin,” a new chapter from her memoir on-air.

KCAW Raven Radio will be airing Brooke Shafer’s interview and conversation with Rita Banerjee on Sunday, May 7, 10:30 am Alaska Time (2:30 pm EDT, 11:30 am PDT). And you can listen to “The Library Show” broadcast live (or download it) on May 7 on Raven Radio at:

https://www.kcaw.org/program-schedule/

February 9, 2023February 9, 2023

Warren Wilson College Announces Dr. Rita Banerjee as the Next Director of the MFA Program for Writers

Following an extensive and highly competitive national search, Warren Wilson College has announced the appointment of Dr. Rita Banerjee as the next director of the MFA Program for Writers and assistant professor of creative writing.

The MFA Program for Writers is a rigorous and highly-selective four-semester graduate program that is consistently ranked as one of the most prestigious low-residency MFA in creative writing programs in the country. Faculty and alumni include Nobel, Pulitzer, and National Book Award winners, national and state poet laureates, and NEA, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and MacArthur fellows.

Banerjee brings extensive experience to the position. She is an award-winning writer herself, and has previously served as director of MFA programs at two other schools.

“I am honored to join Warren Wilson as the new director of the MFA Program for Writers, which has such an illustrious history and has launched the careers of so many talented writers worldwide, and which offers a vibrant, world-class education focused on artistry, rigor, community, and the possibilities of the imagination,” Banerjee said.

Banerjee holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. She has served as director of MFA programs at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Long Island University. She is co-founder and executive creative director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, which was founded at Harvard University, an editor-at-large of the “South Asian Avant-Garde,” and she served as interim executive director of Kundiman, a national organization dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American creative writing.

Her extensive teaching experience spans creative writing (including poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction), literature, publishing, and foreign languages in graduate, undergraduate, and community workshop settings in the U.S. and abroad.

“Dr. Banerjee’s extensive scholarly and creative accomplishments, combined with her demonstrated administrative expertise make her a perfect fit for this world-class, nationally ranked program,” said Dr. Jay Roberts, provost and dean of the faculty at Warren Wilson. “I am confident the MFA Program for Writers is in good hands, and we are excited to watch its continued development under her leadership.”

Banerjee is the author of the poetry collections “Echo in Four Beats,” which was named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018,” and “Cracklers at Night.” She is also editor of “CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing” and author of the novella “A Night with Kali.” She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto “Merchants of Cool: How Female Cool Could Not Be Sold,” and one of the opening chapters of this new memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 “Best American Essays.”

“Rita is an accomplished writer-scholar, a committed teacher and mentor, and an expert administrator,” said Christie Kitano, a MFA poetry faculty member who served on the search committee. “The MFA is a storied program with deeply held roots and traditions, so it was difficult to imagine finding a new director who would maintain the program’s core values while simultaneously envisioning new possibilities. Luckily, Rita immediately stood out as uniquely skilled and prepared to take on this responsibility. She commands the right combination of expertise, imagination, and vision to lead the program into the future.”

Banerjee’s appointment follows the retirement of the current director of the MFA Program for Writers Debra Allbery, who has held the position for the past 14 years. Allbery will continue serving during a transitional time, when she will mentor Banerjee leading toward the June 2023 residency when Banerjee’s directorship will begin.

“We are proud to welcome Rita into our community and look forward to working with her,” said Dr. Paula Garrett, the chair of the English department at Warren Wilson College. “We are also grateful for Deb Allbery’s continued leadership, and so appreciate her mentoring of Rita in this transitional time. We anticipate a great future for the MFA, both continuing its great traditions and welcoming changes as the field itself is changing.”

Read more about Dr. Rita Banerjee at Warren Wilson here.
Read more about Warren Wilson’s acclaimed MFA Program for Writers here.

February 9, 2023

Tongass Mist Writing Retreat featuring Visiting Writer Rita Banerjee in Sitka, Alaska (April 13-16, 2023)

The Tongass Mist Writing Retreat featuring Visiting Writer Rita Banerjee will take place at the Tongass Fine Arts Campus in Sitka, Alaska from April 12-16, 2023. Applications are now open through March 19, 2023 at tongassmist.com.

Tongass Mist Writing is owned and operated by Ruth Underhill @ruth_elizabeth_underhill, a local Sitkan with a dream to see more writers experience and cherish the mists of the Tongass National Forest with the knock of raven call and sound of rocks rolling up the shores of this beautiful Tlingit Aáni land where she lives as a very lucky guest. Ruth shapes retreats and writing resources to allow #artists to carry its wild and beauty into their diverse and empowered writing. The retreat includes lodging on an oceanfront campus, daily meals, wilderness excursions, six literary salons, fireside readings, a wildlife cruise, and sauna. Tongass Mist welcomes its second visiting writer to Sitka in April 2023. Rita Banerjee will join the Sitka Fine Arts Campus April 12-16th for a four day retreat featuring wilderness excursions, generative writing salons, readings by a fire, literary craft talks and the incomparable experience of creating, enjoying a welcoming art community in the heart of the Tongass National Forest. Rita comes to visit us with incredible experience writing, film making, teaching, publishing and directing writing programs across the country. To apply, submit an application on the Tongass Mist Writing Retreat website by March 19, 2023 at 3 pm Alaska Standard Time.

July 10, 2018July 11, 2018

July 26, 2018: Paris Lit Up feat. Rita Banerjee

The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is delighted to have our writing faculty from our 2018 Summer in Paris Writing Retreat featured at SpokenWord Paris and Paris Lit Up this summer!

Paris Lit Up featuring Rita Banerjee
Culture Rapide * July 26, 2018 * 8:45 – 11:00 pm
103 rue Julien Lacroix, 75020 Paris, France

Paris Lit Up will host Rita Banerjee as their featured writer on July 26, 2018 from 8:45 – 11:00 pm! Banerjee will read from her new poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (FLP, march 2018), which was selected by Finishing Line Press as their 2018 nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry, and her edited volume CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018). Banerjee will also read from her new collection of essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool, and her novel-in-progress about a Tamil-Jewish family in crisis during a post-authoritarian regime.

Writers from the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Summer in Paris (July 25-30, 2018) Writing Retreat will also read during the open mic portion starting at 8:45 pm.

Paris Lit Up is a non-profit community organization that aims to intensify collaborative artistic practices through community events, performance and publication. With emphasis on transnational writers, artists and musicians, Paris Lit Up promotes the importance of artistic synergy through transparent, democratic, consensus-based decision making.

Rita Banerjee is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018). She is the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, March 2018),which was named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018”, was nominated for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was selected by Finishing Line Press as their 2018 nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry. Banerjee is also the author of the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press, 2010). She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard 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 writing appears in the Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, 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, KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and elsewhere. She is the Director of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an Associate Scholar at Harvard, and the judge for the 2017 Minerva Rising “Dare to Speak” Poetry Chapbook Contest. She is currently working on a novel, a documentary film about race and intimacy, a book on South Asian literary modernisms, and a collection of lyric essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool.

More information about Rita Banerjee’s Echo in Four Beats and CREDO Book Tours available here!