Deja Groomes is a PhD student in English at Rice University. Her research interests include 20th and 21st century African American literature and Black Women’s Writing, Black Girlhood Studies, Black Feminisms and Black Speculation. Prior to Rice, Deja received her M.A. in English from Texas Christian University where her master’s thesis mapped counter-narratives of daughterhood across Black women’s speculative fiction texts.

Her most recent publication, “‘Nothing Less Than Alter the World’: Afrofuturist Daughterhood in Toni Morrison’s ‘A Knowing So Deep’ and Beloved” was published in the journal Femspec in 2025.