28 Days of Black Writers - Roxanne Gay

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

She perhaps best known as the writer of the New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014). She is also the author of the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and Hunger (forthcoming 2017).

After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in the fall 2010 at Eastern Illinois University, where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, in addition to her teaching duties, she was a contributing editor for Bluestem magazine 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.

She is the author of the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and Hunger (forthcoming 2017). Gay's publication of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist in the summer of 2014 led one Time Magazine reviewer to declare, "Let this be the year of Roxane Gay." The review 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."

She also edited the book Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies. In addition to her regular contributions to Salon and the now defunct HTMLGiant, 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. (via Wikipedia)