Do you identify most as any one kind of writer? Somehow, amid her incredibly busy schedule, she found some time to speak with us about her new book, her resolution to be more empathetic in 2017, and what it’s like to write about trauma as a victim of trauma herself.Īmy Brady: You’ve written a novel, short stories, essays, and a memoir, among many other things. Difficult Womendrops today, and it’s wonderful. After two years since her last book published, she gives us a long anticipated collection of short stories. When not writing, Gay teaches at Purdue University, where she’s an associate professor of English, and lectures around the country on race, feminism, and pop culture. Gay’s writing encompasses so much-simultaneously direct, funny, whipsmart, sometimes painful, and always thought-provoking. Together, the books offer some of the best writing from any contemporary American writer. Both were released to critical fanfare and predictably poked the hornet’s nest of conservative Twitter. In 2014, Time Magazine wrote “let this be the year of Roxane Gay.” There are many reasons why that should have been the case, but, most importantly, Gay published two books that year: her debut novel, An Untamed State, and a provocatively titled essay collection, Bad Feminist.
