Rosalie Morales Kearns

Rosalie Morales Kearns, a writer of Puerto Rican and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, is the founder of Shade Mountain Press, the author of the magic-realist story collection Virgins and Tricksters, and the editor of the short story anthology The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women. A product of Catholic schooling from kindergarten through college, Kearns has a B.A. in theology from Fordham University and an MFA from the University of Illinois.

Kearns is the author of Kingdom of Women

From the author

“I was steeped in Catholicism—Catholic school (kindergarten through high school), compulsory Sunday mass, priests invited to dinners and family events, and so forth. Also I’ve always been interested in religion, the bewildering variety of beliefs, the bloodshed it inspires, the way organized religion can and has played such a huge role in supporting the privileged and oppressing the have-nots. And then as a feminist I always found it enraging that the Catholic Church won’t allow women into the priesthood. But you have to wonder, why should I have cared? It’s like I was resenting my exclusion from a club I had no wish to join. That said, I really enjoyed inhabiting the mindset of a character for whom Catholicism is the very air she breathes, even as she’s aware of the institution’s flaws, the misogyny, the inflexibility of the hierarchy. I remember reading in a biography of Galileo that he angrily resisted pressure by his inquisitors to describe himself as a bad Catholic. He was a devout Catholic, he asserted; it was the leaders of the Church who were evil.”

Rosalie Morales Kearns

Rosalie-Morales-Kearns

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