R Raj Rao obtained his PhD in English from the University of Bombay in 1986, and received the Nehru Centenary British Fellowship for postdoctoral research at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, UK, in 1990.
In 1996, Rao was invited as a writer-in-residence to the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, USA, one of the world’s finest writing programs. Rao’s other fellowships include the Quebec-India Fellowship of Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (2008) and the Indian Council of Cultural Relations’ Rotating India Chair Fellowship at Tubingen University, Germany (2016).
Rao has written six collections of poetry, Slide Show, BomGay, For Hire, The Canada Album, National Anthem and Other Poems and Hybristophilia. BomGay has served as the basis of the late Riyad Wadia’s much-acclaimed short uncensored film, BomGay, with Bollywood star Rahul Bose in the lead. The film was most recently screened at Barbican as part of the London International Film Festival on 25th June 2022. Rao’s poems also appear in The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry, Dance of the Peacock, The World That Belongs to Us, The Lie of the Land, Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians and The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City.
Rao’s fiction includes two collections of short stories, One Day I Locked My Flat in Soul City, also translated into Italian; and Crocodile Tears: New and Selected Stories; as well as five novels, The Boyfriend, Hostel Room 131, Lady Lolita’s Lover, Madam, Give Me My Sex, and Mahmud and Ayaz. The Boyfriend has been translated into Italian and French, and has been optioned for a motion picture with international collaboration. Rao’s fiction has appeared in the anthologies, Yaraana: Gay Writing from India; Out: Stories from the New Queer India; Vox 2: Seven Stories, and in the New York crime fiction series, Mumbai Noir, as well as (in Hebrew translation) in House Call: Contemporary Indian Stories. His Collected Stories is due out from Speaking Tiger later this year.
Rao has written a collection of plays, The Wisest Fool on Earth and Other Plays, and a recent collection titled The Wisest Fool on Earth: Ten Street Plays and Three Monologues. The title play, The Wisest Fool on Earth has been visually enacted in New York City and performed in English and Hindi at Prithvi Theatre, Bombay; Holiday Inn, Pune; and Lamakan, Hyderabad. One of the unperformed monologues in the book is a controversial political stand-up, titled Stand Up and Be Counted.
Rao’s nonfiction includes three major books, Nissim Ezekiel: The Authorized Biography; Whistling in the Dark: Twenty Five Queer Interviews, co-edited with Dibyajyoti Sarma; and Criminal Love: Theory and Praxis of Queerness in India. Then there’s a train memoir, titled Train Addiction: Travels Through India by Train. Rao’s nonfiction also includes hundreds of uncollected scholarly articles, book reviews, newspaper and magazine features, interviews, travelogues and weekly and fortnightly columns, in online publications such as Scroll.in and The Wire.in; and in print publications such as The Times of India, Indian Express, The Hindu, Frontline and The Caravan, as well as in international journals and anthologies. Criminal Love won the Likho Book Award for Excellence in Media, while one of Rao’s queer-related op-ed articles as well as his novel Mahmud and Ayaz were short-listed for the Rainbow Awards in 2023 and 2024.
As a co-translator from Marathi, Rao’s work appears in Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature; in a collection of essays by the noted Marathi writer Vilas Sarang; and in the US-based online journal Words Without Borders. His co-translation of the book Me Hijra Me Laxmi by Laxmi Narayan Tripathi was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. His co-translations of Varavara Rao’s poems from the Telugu have appeared in Kavya Bharati (print) and Bengaluru Review (online).
Rao has given readings from his work in London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Milan, Barcelona, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Dhaka and Colombo among other world cities, as well as all over India. He has been a visiting professor at Dresden University, Germany; Tubingen University, Germany; and Concordia University, Canada. He has been an invited speaker to all the world’s G7 countries, namely the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.
Rao has been a panelist at the Jaipur Literature Festival and at literature festivals in Bombay, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa, Lucknow, Shillong and Bangalore.
Rao’s work as a poet and writer has been discussed in various scholarly books. These include: Forbidden Sex/Forbidden Text: New India’s Gay Poets (Routledge); The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexuality in Contemporary India (Seagull Books); Modern Indian Poetry in English (Oxford University Press); Indian English Literature 1980-2000 (Pencraft International); Same Sex Desire in India: Representations in Literature and Film (Palgrave-Macmillan, UK); Gay Icons of India (Pan-Macmillan); and Reading India Now: Contemporary Formations in Literature and Popular Culture (Orient Blackswan).
Several videos of Rao, giving interviews and reading from his work, including a Project Bolo interview, a TEDx talk, and a public lecture at the Nehru Memorial Museum, New Delhi, as well as webinars given during the corona virus lockdown, may be found on YouTube.
Rao is former Professor and Head of the Department of English at the S. P. Pune University, India, where he taught Creative Writing and Queer Studies for over a decade, and Indian Writing in English for nearly 30 years. He is currently a visiting professor at Symbiosis College of Arts & Commerce, Pune; and (till 2023) at Nalanda International University, Rajgir, Bihar.