About

Molly Rogers is a writer, historian, and scholar of the history and theory of photography. Her work employs a variety of literary forms, including fiction, narrative history, essay, and memoir.

Her first book, Delia’s Tears (Yale, 2010), is a narrative history about a group of daguerreotypes of enslaved men and women. The work examines the intersections of photography, early anthropological science, and the politics of race in America during the antebellum era. The editors of Booklist named Delia’s Tears “one of the best titles published in 2010,” and the judges of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Awards “highly commended” the work. In 2010, the University of Warwick awarded Molly a PhD in recognition of the contribution Delia’s Tears makes to historiography.

Molly co-edited (with Ilisa Barbash and Deborah Willis) To Make Their Own Way in the World (Aperture / Peabody Museum Press, 2020), for which she also wrote the introduction. This collection of essays and creative interventions builds upon the scholarship she pioneered in Delia’s Tears. In 2021, To Make Their Own Way in the World won the Historical Book Award at Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France.

In support of her research and writing, Molly was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow with the Library Company and the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia. She has also held fellowships with the Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina; and The Writers’ Institute, CUNY Graduate Center. She has had residencies with the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences.

Molly’s personal writing includes the essay “House of Fear,” published by Colorado Review in 2021 and named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2022. New work, “An Uncommon and Grievous Calamity,” will be published by Colorado Review in the fall 2026 issue.

Currently, Molly is writing a novel about growing up during the Cold War, among other projects. She lives in Queens, New York.