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Quick Facts
Biography
Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974) is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).
Gay was an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University for four years before joining Purdue University as an associate professor of English. In 2018, she left Purdue to become a visiting professor at Yale University.
Gay is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for The Rumpus, co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective, and the editor for Gay Mag, which was founded in partnership with Medium.
Early life and education
Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to parents of Haitian descent. She attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
Gay began her undergraduate studies at Yale University, but dropped out in her junior year to pursue a relationship in Arizona. She completed her undergraduate degree at Vermont College of Norwich University, and also earned an Master's degree with an emphasis in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Gay was inducted into the Omicron Delta Kappa Circle at Michigan Technological University in 2008, where she would earn her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Technical Communication in 2010. Her dissertation is titled Subverting the Subject Position: Toward a New Discourse About Students as Writers and Engineering Students as Technical Communicators. Dr. Ann Brady served as her dissertation advisor.
Career
After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in 2010 at Eastern Illinois University, where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, she was a contributing editor for Bluestem magazine, and she also founded Tiny Hardcore Press. Gay worked at Eastern Illinois University until the end of the 2013–14 academic year. She was an associate professor of creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Purdue University from August 2014 until 2018. Gay announced her departure from Purdue in October 2018, voicing concerns about the fairness of her compensation and noting Purdue had failed to address the issue. For the spring of 2019 Gay was serving as a visiting professor at Yale University.
Gay published a short-story collection, Ayiti (2011), then two books in 2014: the novel An Untamed State and the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), A Time review noted, "Gay’s writing is simple and direct, but never cold or sterile. She directly confronts complex issues of identity and privilege, but it’s always accessible and insightful."
Projects
An Untamed State
In 2014, Gay published her debut novel, An Untamed State, which centers around Mireille Duval Jameson, a Haitian-American woman who is kidnapped for ransom. The novel explores the interconnected themes of race, privilege, sexual violence, family, and the immigrant experience. An Untamed State is often referred to as a fairy tale because of its structure and style, especially in reference to the opening sentence, "Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones," and the author's exploration of the American dream and courtship of Mireille's parents.
The Guardian review by Attica Locke calling it "a breathtaking debut novel," and The Washington Post crediting it as "a smart, searing novel."
Bad Feminist
Gay's collection of essays, Bad Feminist, was released in 2014 to widespread acclaim; it addresses both cultural and political issues, and became a New York Times best-seller. A Time magazine reviewer dubbed Bad Feminist "a manual on how to be human," and called Gay the "gift that keeps on giving." In a 2014 interview with the magazine, Gay explained her role as a feminist, and how it has influenced her writing: "In each of these essays, I’m very much trying to show how feminism influences my life for better or worse. It just shows what it’s like to move through the world as a woman. It’s not even about feminism per se, it’s about humanity and empathy."
In The Guardian, critic Kira Cochrane offered a similar assessment, "While online discourse is often characterised by extreme, polarised opinions, her writing is distinct for being subtle and discursive, with an ability to see around corners, to recognise other points of view while carefully advancing her own. In print, on Twitter and in person, Gay has the voice of the friend you call first for advice, calm and sane as well as funny, someone who has seen a lot and takes no prisoners."
A group of feminist scholars and activists analyzed Gay's Bad Feminist for "Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism," an initiative of the feminist journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
World of Wakanda
In July 2016, Gay and poet Yona Harvey were announced as writers for Marvel Comics' World of Wakanda, a spin-off from the company's Black Panther title, making them the first black women to be lead writers for Marvel.
Black Panther: World of Wakanda was hailed for its prominent portrayal of LGBTQ characters. The comic followed the journey of two lovers Aneka and Ayo, who are former members of the Dora Milaje, the Black Panther's female security force. The series follows the pair through multiple events, including the siege of their city by Thanos and the flooding of Wakanda by Namor.
The series' cancellation was confirmed in June 2017 by Gay, just two days after the premiere of the trailer for the Black Panther movie. The last issue released in March 2017. Marvel stated no official reason for the cancellation; however, feminist tech site The Mary Sue pointed to a connection with Marvel's knock against "diversity titles" andMarvel VP David Gabriel's statement that "people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales."
Difficult Women
In 2017, Gay published Difficult Women, a collection of short stories that highlight women who have lives that differ from society’s spectrum of a normal life. Each story follows a different character and her journey through either a traumatic experience or what makes her different from societal norms.
Hunger
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body was released in June 2017. Throughout, Gay discusses her experience with weight, body image, and building a positive relationship with food, particularly following her experience as a childhood victim of sexual violence. Gay described the book as a testimony of "what it’s like to live in a world that tried to discipline unruly bodies." The memoir received wide acclaim, praised by critics as "remarkable... ferociously honest," "arresting and candid," and "intimate and vulnerable."
Following her national book tour in support of Hunger, Gay said she found press around the book "to be very challenging, because people just don’t know how to talk about fat." In June 2017, Australian website Mamamia published an interview with Gay, revealing numerous details about how they prepared for her visit, which they described as a "logistical nightmare" because of the apparent inconsequence of her weight. On Twitter, Gay later described these preparations, including questions like “Will she fit into the office lift?” as both "cruel and humiliating". In an interview with The New York Times, Gay stated the controversial event was "helpful, in that I think people get to see, in real time, what fat-phobia looks like and just how careless people can be in considering that fat people deserve dignity. So I suppose it’s a useful example of why I wrote the book."
At a February 2019 speaking event at USC, in the Q&A, supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party criticized co-speaker Amanda Nguyen's work in the U.S. government during the War on Terror; in response, Gay defended Nguyen on Twitter.
Not That Bad
Gay was the editor of the anthology titled Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. The collection, published in 2018 by HarperCollins, features essays from Gay and 30 other authors, including actresses Ally Sheedy and Gabrielle Union.
Gay Magazine
Medium approached Gay in 2017 about the possibility of starting a "pop-up" magazine for the online publishing platform. The magazine would specialize in cultural criticism and provide pay for writers including Gay's work in an editorial capacity. The weekly online publication was produced with Medium's Deputy Editor Laura June and Managing Editor Kaitlyn Adams. The first issue, published in late April 2019, featured essays by Athena Dixon and Grace Lavery. In May 2019, Gay and Medium formally launched the new publication, "Gay Magazine." The short-lived journal was also referred to on Medium as "GAY The Magazine--The Best Stories About Culture" and "Gay Mag."The first of the planned quarterly themed editions appeared in June 2019; public submissions were solicited in addition to the commissioned articles. The final issue of Medium's Gay Magazine was themed 'Power' and was posted on April 3, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic's global lockdowns.
In October 2019, asked about "Gay Magazine," Gay responded, "I’m doing what I always aim to do as an editor, which is to create a literary space for a range of voices who have something smart and interesting to say — and more importantly, to be able to pay them well. One of the biggest challenges of the digital media landscape is that the money is concentrated at the top and it rarely trickles down to the editors and writers, so to be able to have the support of Medium to create a publication — for however long it lasts – where we can pay people equitably and fairly is a really great thing. There is so much good writing going on out there, and I love being able to have a small hand in bringing that into the world."
Unruly Bodies
In April 2018, Gay partnered with the online publishing platform Medium to create a month-long pop-up magazine called Unruly Bodies. The magazine explored the relationship people share with their bodies, through an anthology of essays by 25 writers (including Gay herself). Gay asked the twenty-four writers, "What does it mean to live in an unruly body?"; her book dealing with such issues, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, had been published in 2017. In a 2018 interview, Gay said, "I was surprised because I expected that I might get a lot of repetition, of [subject], not of style, but people wrote about all kinds of things. They wrote about gender, size, gun violence, wrestling, sex, ability. The range of issues from that one prompt, with the way that writers responded, was wonderful, and affirmed that I made very good choices in the writers that I approached." In April 2018, over a year before the actual launch of the online magazine, "Gay Magazine" posted 25 articles in response to Gay's query under the heading Unruly Bodies; the writers were: Kaveh Akbar, Gabrielle Bellot, S. Bear Bergman, Keah Brown, Meghan Carpentier, Mike Copperman, Jennine Capó Crucet, Kelly Davio, Mensah Demary, Danielle Evans, Roxane Gay, Casey Hannan, Samantha Irby, Randa Jarrar, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, Terese Mailhot, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Brian Oliu, Tracy Lynne Oliver, Larissa Pham, Matthew Salesses, Chelsea G. Summers and Your Fat Friend.
Other projects
Gay was the editor of The Butter, an online feminist writing site and sister site to The Toast, from November 2014 to August 2015. The Butter featured writing on subjects including disability, literature, family, and music. The Butter ceased publishing in August 2015, with Gay stating she was "simply stretched too thin."
Gay was a U.S. Guardian columnist from 2015 - 2018.
Gay was the guest judge and guest editor of The Masters Review annual fiction anthology in 2017.
Gay was featured in a five-minute segment of This American Life on June 17, 2016, talking about her body, and how she is perceived as a fat person.
Gay announced in January 2017 that she was pulling her book How to Be Heard, originally set to be published in 2018 by TED Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, due to her objections to alt-right journalist Milo Yiannopoulos receiving a book deal from another Simon & Schuster imprint.
She also edited the book Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies. In addition to her regular contributions to Salon and the now-defunct HTMLGiant, her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, Bookforum, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation and The New York Times Book Review.
Gay was featured in the 2016 book In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs.
In July 2019, Gay launched a book club on HBO's VICE News Tonight.
In 2019, Gay partnered with Tressie McMillan Cottom to create a black feminist podcast titled "Hear To Slay," which was set to feature influential black women as guests, including Stacey Abrams, Gabrielle Union, and Ava DuVernay.
Awards and honors
- 2015: PEN Center USA Freedom to Write Award
- 2017: National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Autobiography category
- 2018: Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in General Nonfiction
- 2018: Eisner Award for Best Limited Series, for World of Wakanda (with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alitha Martinez)
- 2018: Lambda Literary Award Trustee Award
- 2018: Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction, for Hunger
- In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty named her among the fifty heroes "leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people".
Themes
Much of Gay's written work deals with the analysis and deconstruction of feminist and racial issues through the lens of her personal experiences with race, gender identity, and sexuality.
Personal life
Gay began writing essays as a teenager; her work has been greatly influenced by a sexual assault she experienced at the age of 12 at the hands of her boyfriend and his friends.
Gay is openly bisexual, and in a relationship with Debbie Millman. In November 2019, Gay shared news of her engagement to Millman. In August 2020, Gay shared that they had recently eloped.
Gay shared that in January 2018 she had undergone sleeve gastrectomy, a Bariatric surgery that removes 85% of the stomach. She is 6 feet 3 inches tall.
Works and publications
- Fiction
- Gay, Roxane (2011). Ayiti. New York/Oregon: Artistically Declined Press. ISBN 978-1-450-77671-4. OCLC 776999100.
- — (2014). An Untamed State. New York: Black Cat / Grove Atlantic. ISBN 9780802122513. OCLC 903123484.
- — (2017). Difficult Women. New York: Grove Atlantic. ISBN 978-0-802-12539-2. OCLC 957223378.
- Non-fiction
- Gay, Roxane (2014). Bad Feminist. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-062-28272-9. OCLC 877890878.
- — (2017). Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. New York: Harper. ISBN 9780062362599. OCLC 918590664.
- Selected short fiction
- Gay, Roxane (July 6, 2016). "Group Fitness". Oxford American (60).
- — (2013). "The Year I Learned Everything". Prairie Schooner. 87 (1): 23–41. doi:10.1353/psg.2013.0032. JSTOR 24640291.
- Other selected works
- Gay, Roxane (2010). Subverting the Subject Position: Toward a New Discourse About Students as Writers and Engineering Students as Technical Communicators (Thesis/dissertation). Houghton, MI: Michigan Technological University. OCLC 774576963.