Roxane Gay

Biography

Roxane Gay is the author of several books, including Difficult Women (Grove, 2017); the memoir Hunger (Harper Collins, 2017); and the essay collection Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial, 2014), the title essay of which first appeared in VQR. Her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Short Stories, Best Sex Writing, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, the New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, TIME, the Nation, the Rumpus, and Salon, among others. She is a founding editor of PANK.

See Work

ESSAYS / Fall 2014

The Price of Black Ambition

By Roxane Gay

I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe that all good things will come if I—if we—just work hard...
ESSAYS / Fall 2012

Bad Feminist

By Roxane Gay

The most significant problem with essential feminism is how it doesn’t allow for the complexities of human experience or individuality. There seems to be little room for multiple or discordant points of view.