Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, blogger, and commentator. She is a 2015 winner of PEN USA’s Freedom to Write award for her demonstration of exceptional courage in the defence of free expression.
Gay was born in Nebraska to Haitian parents. Her family moved several times during her childhood and as Gay was a quiet child, she struggled to make friends. Gay was a prolific reader, and she found comfort in books like Little House on the Prairie which felt like home to her. Gay’s parents were determined that she would excel academically and her mother gave her extra homework in addition to her school work.
At the age of 12, Gay was sexually assaulted and her peers had attacked her as the perpetrator of the incident, claiming that she wanted it and was a ‘slut’. Unable to talk about the incident, Gay turned to food as a way to try and recover control of her body, and writing to try and work through her experience. A teacher at the exclusive Phillips Exeter Academy noticed her talent, although her stories put her in counselling for their dark and violent subject matter. Her teacher encouraged her, telling her to write every day and teaching her how to craft stories instead of just purging her feelings.
Gay continued her education at Yale University but dropped out to be with a man she’d met online. She spent a year with him in Arizona before her family tracked her down and she moved back to Nebraska to be near them. Gay began publishing erotica in her early 20’s, but when she continued her studies and gained an M.A in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln she moved on to literary fiction and non-fiction. In 2010, Gay received her Ph.D from Michigan Technological University in Rhetoric and Technical Communication. While working on her Ph.D, she worked in a bar so that she could overcome her shyness in talking to people. In the same year, Gay founded Tiny Hardcore Press, an illinois-based independent publisher and small press.
In 2011, Gay’s first book, a short story collection entitled Ayiti was published, she also contributed to New Stories From the Midwest 2011 and 2012, Best American Short Stories 2012 and Best Sex Writing 2012. In 2012, Gay found that 90% of the books reviewed by the New York Times were by white writers and has worked hard to raise the profile of writers of colour. She has published lists of brilliant waters of colour on the online literary magazine, the Rumpus, for which she is an essays editor.
In 2014, Gay’s first novel, An Untamed State was published and made her an ‘overnight literary sensation’ and was a cathartic experience for her due to her past experiences in the woods as a 12 year old. That same year, a collection of her essays entitled ‘Bad Feminist’ were also published. The essays begin with her stating that she embraces the label ‘bad feminist’ because she is human, and therefore flawed. She noted that she’d previously felt that feminism wasn’t for her, as she is black and identifies as queer and the movement has historically catered towards middle class, heterosexual, white women to the exclusion of the rights of others. Gay supports the aims of feminism, in fighting for equal opportunities for men and women, reproductive freedom and affordable healthcare for all. In her essays, she writes about how her Haitian American upbringing affected her and that we should not blame feminism when it falls short of our exceptions, but instead blame those flawed people within the movement whose fault it really is. She also dismantles some of the stereotypes people feel about feminism – like how it is perfectly fine to be a feminist and still shave your legs and enjoy the melodies of problematic misogynist pop songs. The essays were first published in magazines including the American Prospect and on websites such as Salon, Jezebel and the Rumpus.
Gay is currently an associate professor of English at Purdue University where she researches topics including, the intersections between race, gender, and popular culture, contemporary fiction, and the political novel. She believes that teaching media literacy is essential, as she herself has only recently developed a way to enjoy things that she knows are problematic – like The Bachelor.
Gay is outspoken on the issues she believes in including: sexual assault; the need for a woman on the $10 bill; police brutality or recent news stories. She uses her writing to fight on behalf of the LGBTQ community, women, people of colour, and anybody who has ever felt marginalized and as a result of this, was awarded PEN USA’s Freedom to Write award for her demonstration of exceptional courage in the defence of free expression in 2015. She continues to write and her next book, Hunger, will be released in 2016. She is a contributing editor for Bluestem Magazine and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective.