Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz is a Mexicana/Chicana fronteriza queer educator, award-winning translator, writer, activist, and performer from Sonora, Mexico, and southern California. She is a professor at Trinity University, who teaches Mexican, Chicana/o/e/x, and Latina/o/e/x literatures, cultures, gender, sexuality, theater, and performance studies. She authored Wild Tongues: Transnational Mexican Popular Culture and has coauthored or coedited six books related to her fields of study. Her story “First Visit,” about being undocumented as an undergraduate student, is in the anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings, coedited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca. Along with her dear friend and colega Dr. L Heidenreich, she coauthored the book Writing That Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx/Latinx Studies, which received the 2025 Chicana Caucus Catrióna Rueda Esquibel Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies.
Rita joins the Book Festival to discuss her latest project, JOTA: A Queer Latina y Latinx Anthology.
