Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974) is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator.

Gay received a Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University in 2010.

She was inducted into the Omicron Delta Kappa Circle.

Her dissertation is titled Subverting the Subject Position: Toward a New Discourse About Students as Writers and Engineering Students as Technical Communicators. Ann Brady served as her dissertation advisor.

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 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."

In 2023, Gay was one of more than 370 New York Times contributors to sign an open letter expressing "serious concerns about editorial bias" in the newspaper's reporting on transgender people.

The letter characterized the reporting as using "an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language", and raised concerns regarding the newspaper's employment practices regarding trans contributors.

Gay worked at Eastern Illinois University until the end of the 2013–14 academic year.

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.

She was an associate professor of creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Purdue University from August 2014 until 2018.

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."

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.

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.

Six issues of the comic were published.

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.

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, and the editor for Gay Mag, which was founded in partnership with Medium.

Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Michael and Nicole Gay, both of Haitian descent.

Her mother was a homemaker and her father is owner of GDG Béton et Construction, a Haitian concrete company.

Gay is a cousin of Claudine Gay.

Gay was raised Catholic and spent her summers visiting family in Haiti.

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

Gay began writing essays as a teenager, with much of her early work being influenced by her experience with childhood sexual violence.

Her parents were relatively wealthy, supporting her through college and paying her rent until she was 30.

After matriculating 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.

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.

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.