Roxane Gay

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Roxane Gay
Gay in 2014
Gay in 2014
Born (1974-10-15) October 15, 1974 (age 49)
Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
OccupationProfessor, writer
Education
GenresNovel, short story, criticism
Spouse
(m. 2020)
RelativesClaudine Gay (cousin)
Scientific career
FieldsCommunication studies
ThesisSubverting the subject position: toward a new discourse about students as writers and engineering students as technical communicators (2010)
Doctoral advisorAnn Brady
Website
roxanegay.com

Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974)

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.[3]

Gay is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times,[4] founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for The Rumpus, and the editor for Gay Mag, which was founded in partnership with Medium.[5][6][7]

Early life and education

Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska,[1] to Michael and Nicole Gay, both of Haitian descent.[8][9] Her mother was a homemaker and her father is owner of GDG Béton et Construction, a Haitian concrete company.[10][11] Gay is a cousin of Claudine Gay.[12] Gay was raised Catholic and spent her summers visiting family in Haiti.[13][14] She attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.[15] Gay began writing essays as a teenager,[16] with much of her early work being influenced by her experience with childhood sexual violence.[17] Her parents were relatively wealthy, supporting her through college and paying her rent until she was 30.[13]

After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, Gay began her undergraduate studies at Yale University, but dropped out in her junior year to pursue a relationship in Arizona.[18][19] She completed her undergraduate degree at Vermont College at Norwich University, and also received a master's degree with an emphasis in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.[20]

Gay received a Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University in 2010.[21] She was inducted into the Omicron Delta Kappa Circle.[22] Her dissertation is titled Subverting the Subject Position: Toward a New Discourse About Students as Writers and Engineering Students as Technical Communicators.[23] Ann Brady served as her dissertation advisor.[23]

Career

After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in 2010 at Eastern Illinois University,[24] where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, she was a contributing editor for Bluestem magazine,[25] 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.[5][26] 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.[27] For the spring of 2019 Gay was serving as a visiting professor at Yale University.[27]

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).[28] 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."[29]

In May 2021, Gay announced she was starting a new imprint under Grove Atlantic, called Roxane Gay Books.[30] The first three books to be published under the imprint were announced in 2023.[31]

In 2023, Gay was one of more than 370 New York Times contributors to sign an

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail"—the open letter as a form that "Should End," as it allows writers to "hold fast to [their] deeply held beliefs without having to question them or grapple with doubt" and to "mitigate... helplessness with performance rather than practice."[35]

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.

American dream and courtship of Mireille's parents.[36][37]

The Guardian review by Attica Locke calling it "a breathtaking debut novel,"[37] and The Washington Post crediting it as "a smart, searing novel."[38]

Gay being interviewed in 2015

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.

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."[40]

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."[17]

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.[41]

World of Wakanda