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Roxane Gay

Biography

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is the author of the essay collection BAD FEMINIST, which was a New York Times bestseller; the novel AN UNTAMED STATE, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize; the memoir HUNGER, which was a New York Times bestseller and received a National Book Critics Circle citation; and the short story collections DIFFICULT WOMEN and AYITI.

A contributing opinion writer to the New York Times, she has also written for Time, McSweeney’s, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Bookforum and Salon. Her fiction has also been selected for The Best American Short Stories 2012, The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 and other anthologies. She is the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She lives in Lafayette, Indiana, and sometimes Los Angeles.

Roxane Gay

Books by Roxane Gay

Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business
by Roxane Gay - Essays, Nonfiction

Since the publication of the groundbreaking BAD FEMINIST and HUNGER, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society --- state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women’s rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy --- alongside more individually personalized matters: Can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8am meeting? In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication’s “Work Friend” columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights. OPINIONS is a collection of her best nonfiction pieces from the past 10 years.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
by Roxane Gay - Memoir, Nonfiction

Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In HUNGER, she explores her past --- including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life --- and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture
edited by Roxane Gay - Essays, Gender Studies, Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence and aggression they face, and where they are “routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied” for speaking out. Contributions include essays from established and up-and-coming writers, performers and critics, including actors Ally Sheedy and Gabrielle Union and writers Amy Jo Burns, Lyz Lenz and Claire Schwartz.

Difficult Women
by Roxane Gay - Fiction, Short Stories

The women in Roxane Gay’s latest collection of stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind.

Bad Feminist
by Roxane Gay - Cultural Studies, Essays, Nonfiction

A sharp, funny, and spot-on series of essays that examines how the culture we consume --- from The Help to Girls to Django Unchained --- shapes who we are. Bridging politics, criticism, feminism, and autobiography, Roxane Gay’s provocative prose will leave you both challenged and inspired.