Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay

Reading at Fall for the Book, 2014
Born (1974-10-15) October 15, 1974
Nebraska, United States
Occupation Professor, writer
Nationality American
Alma mater Michigan Technological University
Phillips Exeter Academy
Genres Novel, short story, criticism
Website
roxanegay.com

Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974)[1][2] is an American feminist writer, professor, editor and commentator.[3][4] She is an associate professor of English at Purdue University, contributing opinion writer at The New York Times,[5] founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for The Rumpus, and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective.[6][7]

Education

Gay holds a doctoral degree in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Technological University. The title of her dissertation is Subverting the subject position: toward a new discourse about students as writers and engineering students as technical communicators.[8]

She attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.[9]

Career

After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in Fall 2010 at Eastern Illinois University,[10] where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, in addition to her teaching duties she was a contributing editor for Bluestem magazine[11] and she also founded Tiny Hardcore Press. Gay worked at Eastern Illinois University until the end of the 2013-2014 academic year, taking a job in August 2014 at Purdue University as associate professor of creative writing.[6]

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. She is the author of the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), and Hunger (forthcoming 2016).[12] She also edited the book Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies.[13] In addition to her regular contributions to Salon and the now defunct HTMLGiant,[14] 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.[15]

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,[16] making her the first black woman to be a lead writer for Marvel.[17]

Bad Feminist

Gay’s most recent published work, Bad Feminist, is a creative selection of essays which tackle a range of topics from competitive Scrabble playing to advice on how to acknowledge privilege. Bad Feminist, which addresses both cultural and political issues, became a New York Times best-seller.[18] Time magazine 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.”[19]

Hunger

Her latest book, Hunger, is to be released in 2017.[20] Hunger will be about Gay's experience with weight, body image and building a positive relationship with food. In an interview with Elite Daily Gay described this book as a testimony of “what it’s like to live in a world that tried to discipline unruly bodies.” [21]

Gay was featured in a 5-minute segment of This American Life on June 17, 2016, talking about her body, and how she is perceived as a fat person.[22]

Reception

Gay's publication of the novel An Untamed State and essay collection Bad Feminist in the summer of 2014 led Time Magazine to declare, "Let this be the year of Roxane Gay."[23] The magazine noted of her inclusive style: "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."

In the United Kingdom's 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."[24]

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.[25]

Personal life

Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska[2] and her family moved several times in her childhood. Struggling to make friends, she turned to books instead. She began writing essays as a teenager;[26] her work has been greatly influenced by a sexual assault she experienced at age 12.[24] She is of Haitian descent, and writes about how her Haitian American upbringing affected her in her book of essays, Bad Feminist.[27]

Gay is also a competitive Scrabble player in the U.S.[28]

She is bisexual.[29]

Bibliography

Fiction

Non-fiction

References

  1. ↑ "Roxane Gay". Freedom from Religion Foundation.
  2. 1 2 Gay, Roxane. "Once, I Was Pretty". freerangenonfiction.com. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
  3. ↑ "Roxane Gay". Salon.com. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  4. ↑ Halle, Steve (March 29, 2012). "Roxane Gay to Visit Bloomington-Normal/ISU on April 17". WordPress.com. Archived from the original on December 13, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  5. ↑ Gay, Roxane (August 21, 2016). "Nate Parker and the Limits of Empathy". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-08-26.
  6. 1 2 Higgins, Jim (May 23, 2014). "Talking with 'An Untamed State' author Roxane Gay". The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
  7. ↑ "About". PANK. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
  8. ↑ "Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports". Retrieved August 3, 2014.
  9. ↑ John Freeman (Summer 2014). "Roxane Gay". Bomb.
  10. ↑ "2010-2011 Undergraduate Catalog" (PDF). Eastern Illinois University. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  11. ↑ "Masthead". English Department, Eastern Illinois University. Archived from the original on April 30, 2014. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  12. ↑ "Roxane Gay". Goodreads. Retrieved September 25, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Roxane Gay". Amazon.com. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
  14. ↑ "Roxane Gay – HTMLGIANT". htmlgiant.com.
  15. ↑ "Posts by Roxane Gay". Rumpus Magazine. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
  16. ↑ Gustines, George Gene (2016-07-22). "Marvel's World of Wakanda Will Spotlight Women, on the Page and Behind It". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  17. ↑ Blay, Zeba (2016-07-29). "Roxane Gay Is The Lead Writer Of A Marvel Comic. Here's Why That's Huge.". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  18. ↑ "Bad Feminist | Roxane Gay". www.roxanegay.com. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  19. 1 2 Feeney, Nolan (August 5, 2014). "Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist Is a "Manual on How to Be a Human"". Time. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  20. ↑ Christian Holub, "Roxane Gay announces Difficult Women, delays Hunger", Entertainment Weekly, June 17, 2016.
  21. ↑ "I Want Your Job: Roxane Gay, Author Of 'Bad Feminist'". Elite Daily. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  22. ↑ "Tell Me I'm Fat". This American Life. Retrieved 2016-07-06.
  23. ↑ Feeney, Nolan (May 7, 2014). "Roxane Gay's Riveting Debut Novel An Untamed State". Time. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  24. 1 2 3 Cochrane, Kira (2 August 2014). "Roxane Gay: Meet the Bad Feminist". The Guardian. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  25. ↑ "Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Retrieved 2016-02-02.
  26. ↑ Tietzel, Nina (June 4, 2015). "Roxane Gay: Writer and self-proclaimed 'bad feminist' talks truth and fiction". ABC. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
  27. ↑ Gregory, Alice. "Daphne Merkin's "The Fame Lunches" and Roxane Gay's "Bad Feminist"". The New York Times. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
  28. ↑ Gay, Roxane. "Gay, Roxane. "In Ways You Would Never Ever Forget"". Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  29. ↑ Roxane Gay (October 11, 2015). "Twitter". Mobile.twitter.com. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
  30. ↑ Waldman, Katy. "It Is Good to Be a "Bad" Feminist". Slate. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
  31. ↑ Gay, Roxane (2017). Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. Harper. ISBN 978-0062362599.

External links

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