Rachel Grant attended Howard University at the height of the black power and civil rights movement. She began her career in education as a social studies teacher and literacy specialist in Washington DC. After earning a PhD at the University of Maryland-College Park concentrating in literacy education, she held faculty positions at universities in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Her research interests include application of critical pedagogies focusing on intersections of race, class, culture and gender in first and second language literacies, literacy teacher education, and urban education. Her work has appeared in Reading Research Quarterly, TESOL Quarterly, Linguistics and Education, and Multicultural Perspectives. Her most recent publications are focused on the application of womanist theory in language and literacy teaching and learning within second language and urban communities.