Roxane Gay

http://www.roxanegay.com

Roxane Gay’s writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, The Rumpus, Salon, The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy culture blog, and many others. She is the co-editor of PANK and essays editor for The Rumpus. She teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. Her novel, An Untamed State, will be published by Grove Atlantic and her essay collection, Bad Feminist, will be published by Harper Perennial, both in 2014.

Things I Have Wanted to Post About

Sometimes I have too many things I want to post about and not enough time and then I spend more time thinking about all the posts I’m not writing so in order to focus on a few upcoming posts, I need to clear my mental decks of these tidbits I do not have the time to turn into longer posts.

According to The New York TImes, literary magazines are thriving. I wonder if that’s true. I don’t disagree but I would love for us to have a broader conversation about this topic. The magazines noted in the article are all Bay Area (SF) magazines with significant readerships that are fairly well-established, although The Rumpus and Canteen can certainly be considered newcomers that are thriving. What does it mean for a magazine to “thrive”–financially and editorially? Do other editors feel their magazines are thriving? Publishing is supposedly not thriving (though I disagree). What can book publishers and magazine publishers learn from one another about thriving?

A friend sent me this great link to a Lifehacker article about why it is futile to compare ourselves to others. At The Rumpus, Sugar offers some really timely and pointed advice about begrudging the success of other writers through peer jealousy. These things are connected and also remind me of several conversations I’ve seen around the “blogosphere” in recent months about writing, success, feeling the pressure of social networking as a writer, and how we measure ourselves against other writers and so on.

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Random / 7 Comments
April 15th, 2011 / 8:44 pm
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Vice has an excerpt from James Frey’s forthcoming The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. I loved Bright Shiny Morning so I’m really looking forward to this book. (Thanks for the heads up, Sean Doyle)

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Oh, Sweet Valley Confidential!

I have an intense attachment to the books I loved as a child and teenager. I think we all do. As you might imagine, when I learned there would be a new addition go the Sweet Valley High canon, I clutched my pearls and lost my shit. I started reading Sweet Valley Confidential when it downloaded to my Kindle at 2:30 in the morning on the day it was released. Ten years have passed since we last encountered our heroines, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield. Everything has changed and yet, truly, nothing has changed in Sweet Valley, California.  Almost every woman I know who is my age or thereabouts is reading this book right now and it has little to do with the book itself (terribly, terribly written) or the plot (horribly contrived and outlandish). It’s about remembering how much we loved the original series, and following the lives of The Twins, who were perfect, All-American girls we either loved or loved to hate.  I have every reason in the world to hate everything about these books but I don’t. I love them, unabashedly and I will admit that I love this reboot, too. The drama! The scandal! Knowing where they are now!

In the original series, nearly every book began with a breathless description of The Twins and their blonde perfection. It did my heart good to see that SVC has not strayed too far from the path:

Like the twins of that poem, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield appeared interchangeable, if you considered only their faces.

And what faces they were.

Gorgeous. Absolutely amazing. The kind you couldn’t stop looking at. Their eyes were shades of aqua that danced in the light like shards of precious stones, oval and fringed with thick, light brown lashes long enough to cast a shadow on their cheeks. Their silky blond hair, the cascading kind, fell just below their shoulders. And to complete the perfection, their rosy lips looked as if they were penciled on. There wasn’t a thing wrong with their figures, either. It was as if billions of possibilities all fell together perfectly.

Twice.

Who else is reading this? Fess up!

Random / 20 Comments
April 8th, 2011 / 2:00 pm

The Terrible Satisfactions of Fan Fiction (and Writing Who We Know As Fan Fiction)

In the late 90s, I was obsessed with a television show on USA Network, La Femme Nikita,* which was vaguely based on the wonderful French movie La Femme Nikita and the horrible remake Point of No Return. The show centered around Nikita, a woman who was forced into being a government agent for a nefarious covert agency who often had to consider the greater good while doing bad things. There were all kinds of supporting characters like Michael, her love interest and the main who trained Nikita as an agent, Birkoff, the computer genius who helped run the covert operations from headquarters, Operations, the dastardly man in charge of Section (the covert agency), and Madeline, Operations’s sometimes lover and the second in command at Section, and also worked with Nikita who was the tormented emotional core of the show. The show was filled with angsty goodness in each episode as Nikita struggled with the life she was forced into, having to kill or be killed. She had freedom, but only so much. She had Michael, but only so much. It was romantic and agonizing and wonderful. Sometimes, I wanted more than what I could get from a one hour episode. That’s how I learned about fan fiction, where fans of the show wrote elaborate stories using the characters and the world built within the show as a starting point for telling new stories. There were hundreds and hundreds of stories that asked and answered the question, “What if?” posed in countless different ways. I could read stories about Nikita marrying Michael and having a child and negotiating their careers as spies, or Birkoff and Operations having an affair (SLASH), or Nikita and Operations having an affair, or Nikita escaping and starting over only to be caught, or  Madeline taking over Section or Nikita going rogue. The permutations were endless and there was something terribly satisfying about seeing just what was possible within the Nikita universe when the characters were freed from their creators.

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Craft Notes / 12 Comments
April 7th, 2011 / 4:19 pm

Another Kind of Reading List

I always enjoy the reading lists posted here because I like to see what other people read but I rarely see a lot of the books I like to read. Half the time I haven’t heard of most of the books people are talking about. I am finally done unpacking my new apartment, seven months after the move, and I looked at my bookshelves and thought I would make a list of some of my favorite books, the ones I like to read over and over, the ones I read to relax and think and day dream. Some are “literary,” and some are “mass market,” but I don’t really think about books in those terms. I like good stories and these books all tell damn good stories. What are some of the books you love but rarely find on other people’s reading lists?

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Random / 31 Comments
April 5th, 2011 / 8:17 pm

Negative Reviews

It is always, always in bad form to respond to a negative review because your writing is personal and the reviewer, generally, is simply doing their job. Over at the website Big Al’s Books and Pals, the novel The Greek Seaman by Jacqueline Howett, was reviewed, rather negatively. The writer proceeded to have a complete meltdown in the comments. Every writer should carry a Post-It note at all times that reads, DO NOT RESPOND TO A NEGATIVE REVEW. In the past few months, I’ve seen writers who should know better responding to reviews trying to “clarify” their intentions or taking issue with some aspect of the review and it only ends up making the writer look bad. When you receive a bad review it is natural to respond emotionally. That’s what your friends are for. They’ll tell you the reviewer was wrong and explain, in detail, how and why. They will let you ramble incoherently. They will buy you drinks. They will keep you from responding and making a fool of yourself. The moral of the story is this: if you are a writer, it is good to have friends because friends don’t let friends respond to bad reviews.

Behind the Scenes / 69 Comments
March 28th, 2011 / 5:21 pm

Self-Publishing Isn’t My Worst Mistake

(Ed. note: I received a lot of responses about my post about self-publishing via e-mail, on other blogs, here at HTMLGIANT. A. Lot. It has been a really interesting discussion and one that will continue. One writer, Mary Maddox, wanted to share her own story of trying to break into mainstream publishing and eventually choosing to self-publish her novel.)

Roxane’s piece on the value of self-publishing upset me. Last year I started Cantraipt Press and published my novel Talion, so I took some of her comments very personally. Yet she doesn’t denounce writers who self-publish. Her tone is thoughtful, and she understands why self-publication might be the right decision for some. Now that I’ve calmed down, I understand what happened. I read her piece entirely in the context of my own experience.

While I was at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the 1970’s, a visiting writer came every year to read and conduct a guest workshop. Each faculty member chose two stories by students for this event. My first year John Hawkes came. Hawkes wrote several critically acclaimed books, but he doesn’t seem to be talked about much today. The second year it was Thomas Berger, famous for Little Big Man, a best-seller now gathering dust. Both years, one of my stories was chosen for the guest workshop. My teachers considered me to be a young writer of some promise, and I desperately wanted my fiction to be published.

An introduction from Mary Lee Settle got my first novel read by an editor at Random House, who referred me to a well-known agent with an office in Greenwich Village. I was in my twenties. Imagine my excitement. But the editor had come to Random House recently from another publisher, and he lacked the support to get my novel accepted, even after I’d rewritten it to address the concerns of his colleagues. The Greenwich Village agent represented me for a few years, but she’d taken me on thinking my novel would be accepted at once and her job would be to negotiate a contract. Suddenly it became something else she had to hustle to sell. I don’t think she tried all that hard, especially after a few rejections.

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Random / 20 Comments
March 25th, 2011 / 2:56 pm

Taking No For An Answer: Some New Thoughts on Self-Publishing

Lately, a number of  writers have chosen to self-publish their work. Self-publishing isn’t new but with all the e-publishing options becoming available, there’s far more democracy to publishing and self-publishing than ever before. It doesn’t take much to get a book listed on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or the Apple Bookstore and with a few clicks of the mouse, you are your own publisher. Some of these self publishing writers say that they’re circumventing mainstream publishing as if they are self-publishing by choice, not because they couldn’t get their work published any other way. Sometimes that is actually the case. Sometimes it is not. I have no problem with self-publishing. It is not an option I would choose for myself, mostly because I don’t have the time to do the work required of someone who self publishes. However, I don’t begrudge writers who do avail themselves of the self-publishing route and it can be a really interesting way of challenging the publishing establishment and getting your work out there without having to deal with some of the more problematic aspects of mainstream publishing. At the same time, just because you can do something does not mean you should.

I read this excerpted interview between Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler (full interview here), the latter who turned down a $500K deal with St. Martin’s to self-publish his book and I had a few thoughts: 1) Wait, what?; 2) He must be able to afford turning down half a million dollars; 3) I am not familiar with Barry Eisler; 4) I admire that kind of confidence; 5) He must have the reputation (the talent being implied by the size of the deal) to make more money publishing his book himself; and 6) Neat, ballsy. The interview itself was really interesting but man, I really think there are some writers who underestimate the power of a traditional publisher. I wonder about the direness of publishing implied by some of the comments. I wonder, wonder, wonder.

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Craft Notes / 156 Comments
March 22nd, 2011 / 3:00 pm

Electronic Publishing Bingo

This fantastic Bingo Card was created by John Scalzi.

Web Hype / 8 Comments
March 20th, 2011 / 2:59 pm

Five Items of Interest

At the NPR blog, Linda Holmes writes in praise of cultural omnivores.

Just so you know, there’s a bill in Congress that would call for the auditing of abortions and I would explain in greater detail the many levels of bullshit embedded in this bill but I have a headache. Mother Jones discusses this bill quite well. It is expected to pass through the House easily.

Chris Bower has something to say about wit and wisdom.

I enjoyed this review of a $600 cookbook in The New Yorker.

At The Awl, SJ Culver writes about writing and expectations.

Roundup / 4 Comments
March 18th, 2011 / 3:04 pm