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.

This Post is Not Safe For Work

I have a real problem with the phrase, “not safe for work,” the false sense of security it provides, and the way it condescends.

I understand workplace politics and that there are certain work environments where “mature” or “adult” content is censored or where individuals can be fired for reading such content. That doesn’t make the phrase okay for me. Censorship, in any form, troubles me a great deal.

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Web Hype / 84 Comments
June 1st, 2010 / 2:40 pm

FYI: Publishing is Dying Again Because Garrison Keillor Says So

Another day, another obituary for the publishing industry which, despite countless instances of garment rending for its death, somehow manages to continue… not dying. Garrison Keillor begins his lament by naming all the fancy writers he ran into at a fancy New York party, the implication being that he doesn’t quite belong in the fancy writing world and yet, there he is. Of course, because this is Garrison Keillor, he has to make an aw shucks reference to the Midwest and continues to offer his bona fides as a man of the people because he drives a car with 150,000 miles on it. That’s such a quaint practice when it’s a choice, driving a car into the ground. For people who cannot afford a new car, 150,000 miles probably holds considerably less charm. Keillor does this, of course, to remind us, yet again, that he is not one of the publishing glitterati. He is a stranger in a strange land, or at least, that’s what he wants us to think so he can continue hawking his down home Midwestern charm and wisdom, or what some might call, schlock.

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Behind the Scenes & Mean / 82 Comments
May 27th, 2010 / 3:46 am
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I enjoy really unique book packaging. Tank Books, in the UK, has released a line of classic works packaged in cigarette packs. As an ex-smoker, I’m all over this.

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Meet Adam Gallari

Adam Gallari is an American ex-pat currently working on a novel and pursuing a PhD at the University of Exeter. His essays and fiction have appeared in or are forthcoming from numerous outlets, including The Quarterly Conversation, Fifth Wednesday Journal, therumpus.net, TheMillions.com, anderbo.com and The MacGuffin. I recently read his muted but elegant debut short story collection, We Are Never As Beautiful We Are Now, and talked with Adam about his writing,  living and studying abroad, baseball and much much more. Meet Adam Gallari.

You’re pursuing your Ph.D. in England. What compelled you to head across the Atlantic to continue your higher education? What are you studying? What’s Exeter like? Have you adopted a British accent? Is the writer’s life different in England?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been in love with European culture and history and literature. There’s so much to explore in it, and there’s a great weight that informs it. I’ve always wanted to find a way to live either on the continent or the British Isles for a protracted period of time to be able to immerse myself in everything, and after I returned to American from Germany to get my masters I figured the first chance I had to go back there I would. A PhD seemed like the next logical step for me as far as my “career” was concerned, so I tried to combine the two and so far it’s managed to work out.

As far as the PhD, I’m pursuing it in English and currently trying to narrow down my dissertation, but at the moment it’s tending towards an exploration of the works of the Norwegian Novelist Per Petterson in the greater context of American work. His protagonists many to be both existentialist and realist at the same time; I’d compare it to Hemingway’s Jake Barnes, but I think that ultimately that’s too much of a simplification of the whole thing.

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Author Spotlight / 36 Comments
May 21st, 2010 / 3:00 pm
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The Nepotist is a new magazine with an anonymous editor who simply wants to publish his or her friends, loosely construed. Maybe you will be invited into the inner circle!

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SMIZE: Tyra Banks is Going to Write The Best Book Ever

Did you hear? The news broke late last week. Tyra Banks is going to become a YA author. For those of us who (used to) watch America’s Next Top Model, this is excellent news because now she will bring her signature flair to the written word. If you go to the website of her imprint, BANKABLE BOOKS, she helpfully explains how to pronounce the title of her first novel, Modelland. If you’re curious, that is Model Land. She also says, “I think Modelland is going to really touch the dreamer in all of us, whether you’re aged anywhere from 8 to 80.” This is good news for all of us.

Since the announcement, I’ve seen a lot of snark and garment rending and the sort of reaction that arises any time a celebrity or other literary untouchable (blogger) dares to dip their unanointed toes in the holy waters of literature. How dare they sully the serious work of the serious writer! Yes, I recognize that this is a fairly ridiculous situation–Tyra Banks with a three-book deal while we toil in obscurity is certainly frustrating but do any of us write anything remotely similar to Modelland? Does her book deal mean we won’t get one? Why do we so often begrudge certain writers their book deals? Is anyone else as excited as I am?

Author News / 221 Comments
May 17th, 2010 / 6:04 pm

I Like Lawrence Schimel A Lot

Lawrence Schimel is a prolific writer, editor and publisher living in Madrid, Spain. From erotica to ghostwritten biographies to children’s books, there’s seemingly nothing he cannot write. As publisher of A Midsummer Night’s Press, he is responsible for three imprints and he’s also a friend, like for real. We talk about his press, his writing and his life as an ex-pat writer. Won’t you listen in?

How did A Midsummer Night’s Press come about? Why that name?

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, there was a Vandercook letterpress in the basement of my dorm. I had already begun publishing in anthologies and journals, and I decided to publish a series of limited edition hand printed broadsides. I contacted some writers I already knew or had worked with (Jane Yolen, Nancy Willard, etc.) and asked them for poems, printing runs of 126 copies, 100 numbered which were available for sale and 26 lettered copies which were shared between the author and the press.

When I graduated, the press went on hiatus until 2007 when I started publishing commercially-printed, perfect-bound books.

As for the press’ name, I began writing and publishing science fiction when I was a teenager (Marion Zimmer Bradley bought a story for one of her anthologies when I was still in high school), and since I was known by the nickname “Puck” in SF fandom it just seemed logical to name my press after the same Shakespearean play.

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I Like __ A Lot / 19 Comments
May 14th, 2010 / 12:51 pm

But What About the Nipples? A Nice Conversation (Pt. 3)

Blake Butler, Kate Zambreno, Amy King and I recently had a nice, interesting, and lengthy conversation about gender, publishing and so much more, prompted by lots of things including the recent, and largely excellent discussion in Blake’s “Language Over Body” post about the second issue of We Are Champion. We thank you all so much for engaging with us on these issues. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here.

Amy:  I want to try to connect such modes of discussion and modes of writing with why we might have an inequitable publishing history by citing excerpts from Joan Retallack’s essay, “:RE:THINKING:LITERARY:FEMINISM.”  Blake, when you say we’re “just people” or we’re “just bodies,” I think you’re resisting the notion that biology is essentialist and destiny (it’s not) that determines how and what we write.  You are, in fact, by default arguing against the primary thread of feminist literary tradition that says women’s experiences have traditionally been ignored and must be heard via the writing and, I suspect, you imagine that writers could empathize their way into such positions and write those realities.  Just a guess.

But this notion falls short of what types of writing have been deemed masculine and feminine.  I hope Kate jumps in soon because she most likely has more to say on this matter than I.

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Behind the Scenes / 41 Comments
May 5th, 2010 / 1:30 pm

But What About the Nipples? A Nice Conversation (Pt. 2)

Blake Butler, Kate Zambreno, Amy King and I recently had a nice, interesting, and lengthy conversation about gender, publishing and so much more, prompted by lots of things including the recent, and largely excellent discussion in Blake’s “Language Over Body” post about the second issue of We Are Champion. Over the next three days, I’m going to post that conversation and we all hope you guys join in on our conversation and share your thoughts. You can find Part 1 here.

Amy:  We’ve got our rooms and we’re writing – we are no longer invisible, unless editors and prize committees try to render us so.   My response was an attempt to point out the other option, which is to be inclusive (which means showcasing possibly disparate work that could be in dialogue), via a new mag, PARROT, that includes work fitting the aforementioned bill:

“PARROT will print the work of Stephanie Rioux’s My Beautiful Beds, Harold Abramowitz’s A House on a Hill (House on a Hill Part 1), Amanda Ackerman’s I Fell in Love with a Monster Truck, Will Alexander’s On the Substance of Disorder, Amina Cain’s Tramps Everywhere, Allison Carter’s All Bodies Are The Same and They Have The Same Reactions, Kate Durbin’s Kept Women, Joseph Mosconi’s But On Geometric, Amaranth Ravva’s Airline Music, Mathew Timmons’ Complex Textual Legitimacy Proclamation, Allyssa Wolf’s Loquela as well as the work of Michelle Detorie, Vanessa Place, Brian Kim Stefans and others…”

I realize this number counting feels isolated and is usually defended as ‘accidental’.  Just see PW’s note on their all male “Top Ten” list for 2009.  But what gets lost when we don’t query such disproportionate representation is that the interests and views and styles that men write in are what we all: male, female, and every other gender get conditioned to, starting with child lit on up to college “classics.”  Such lack parallels why the Wall Street fuck up might have been prevented, or at least lessened.  If variety is the spice of life, shouldn’t that hold true for the literary landscape as well?  There should be a symphonic cacophony, no?

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Behind the Scenes / 354 Comments
May 4th, 2010 / 2:30 pm

Sex and Brevity, Fracture and Complexity

Photo by Gary Glass.

Savannah Scholl Gruz questions if the elements of fiction are obsolete in a really interesting post on her blog. She asks, “But why, too, are stories so often about empty sex and blow jobs? Why are so many of them full of violence and figurative blind corners.” Her discussion expresses a real concern over the highly sexualized, fragmented short story and she also notes that, “Maybe we are the decade of fractured, sexual narratives in the same way that we have, in many ways, become a fractured and highly sexualized culture.”

As a writer who often writes sexual narratives, sometimes fractured in nature, but often times, linear and complex, I’m pretty intrigued by her commentary.  Savannah asks if the proliferation of highly sexualized work is a deeper commentary on our culture, a reflection of this moment in time but I would say that literature has always been highly sexualized. It’s only the nature of highly sexualized work that continues to evolve. Similar concerns as the ones Savannah shares in her post were raised at the end of the 19th century, for example. Elaine Showalter’s Sexual Anarchy is a great book that looks at the evolving sexual culture of the fin de siecle and how those cultural changes manifested themselves in literature and popular culture.

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Craft Notes / 73 Comments
May 4th, 2010 / 1:15 pm