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.

Maybe We’re Not Doing It Wrong

Every single writer and editor these days has some idea or theory about how to change publishing or save publishing because, haven’t you heard? Print is dying and people aren’t reading and the sky is falling and the literary world is coming to an end.

Criticism is leveled against big publishing and independent publishing and micropublishing and often times, that criticism is delivered with the rather self-righteous sentiment that everyone is doing it wrong. Often times, it seems that publishers spend more time detailing how they are innovating or how they will innovate rather than letting their actions speak for themselves. Some days, we’re talking about publishing more than putting out great books and magazines and just doing the work of publishing.

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Uncategorized / 60 Comments
December 23rd, 2009 / 3:13 pm

Craft Fitness: On Writing Exercises

The first writing exercise I assign in any class is to have students write a brief (500 words) essay, reflection  or story (depending on the course) in response to a specific prompt using only one syllable words. As I relay the assignment, students express a charming range of reactions from “this bitch is crazy” to “this is impossible and this bitch is crazy,” but off they go to their dorm rooms and apartments and two days later, they return to class having written something within the assignment’s constraints and having learned about the value of a thesaurus.

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Craft Notes / 27 Comments
December 22nd, 2009 / 10:30 am
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We’re giving away copies of One Hour of Television (Kristina Born), We Take Me Apart (Molly Gaudry) and Inconceivable Wilson (JA Tyler). If you want in on the goodness, go here.

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This is Why Black People Always Seem Angry

Once again demonstrating a baffling deafness for tone and a pathetic grip on reality, Publisher’s Weekly offers this as the current issue’s cover:

PWK121409cover

I don’t even know where to begin in deconstructing this bizarre image. The black woman as the exotic, wild creature with crazy hair is not, perhaps, the wisest choice of images. Why not just have Venus Hottentot bare breasted and holding a book parading around the cover? Also, can we talk about the fact that black people haven’t had afros that required picking for roughly 20 years, save for a few people who like a little throwback and even then, they aren’t walking around with a head full of picks? The saddest detail of all may well be the black power fist at the end of each pick (see: Black Panthers, 1960s, things we have let go). What does this image have to do with writing? What is the message PW is trying to convey? This image is offensive and weird and creepy and that the people involved in the editorial process didn’t stop to ask themselves how this image might be perceived is kind of funny and very sad.

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Mean & Random / 166 Comments
December 14th, 2009 / 6:05 pm

On Teaching On Writing On Luck

teachermirror

I’m lucky.

Three days a week I get to stand in front of a classroom of students and talk about writing. I get to try new things and challenge what students understand about writing, words and knowledge. On the first day of class, we play with Legos and it completely blows my students’ minds that this is a serious college class where we’re going to do serious things in fun ways. I love teaching. It is awesome.

Teaching (writing) is hard and frustrating for so many reasons.

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Craft Notes / 91 Comments
December 9th, 2009 / 3:34 pm

We Are Not All Women Writer Mothers

women

Several months ago, I joined a new community for women writers, She Writes, and then I never really participated in the site because with all the networking sites out there, I had a difficult time justifying the investment of my time into yet another social networking site.

The interface is a bit bewildering and chaotic but for the most part, the site seems interesting and offers resources and an active community for women writers. There’s a store selling the books of the site’s members, a blog, many different groups catering to many interests and occasional webinars where experts lead workshops and discussions on topics ranging from finding an agent to self-marketing. The eager, extremely instructive/self-help tone of the site seems to juxtapose awkwardly with the genuine depth of talent of many of the site’s members—many of the instructional efforts seem to be in the vein of preaching to the choir.

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Random / 50 Comments
December 7th, 2009 / 6:12 pm

I Like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz A Lot: Part 5

aptowicz_bookheadshot

I like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz so much that every day this week, I’ll be posting excerpts from a really long interview between Cristin and I about writing, New York and her forthcoming book Everything is Everything which will be released in January 2010 by Write Bloody Press. In today’s final excerpt, Cristin talks about what keeps slam poets from the printed page, really huge Word files and guardians of slam poetry history.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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I Like __ A Lot / Comments Off on I Like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz A Lot: Part 5
December 4th, 2009 / 3:00 pm

I Like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz A Lot: Part 4

aptowicz_bookheadshot

I like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz so much that every day this week, I’ll be posting excerpts from a really long interview between Cristin and I about writing, New York and her forthcoming book Everything is Everything which will be released in January 2010 by Write Bloody Press. In today’s excerpt, Cristin talks about the train to Queens, the circular nature of writing about writing, and performance as process.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3| Part 5 (will work after Friday)

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I Like __ A Lot / 3 Comments
December 3rd, 2009 / 3:00 pm

I Like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz A Lot: Part 3

aptowicz_bookheadshot

I like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz so much that every day this week, I’ll be posting excerpts from a really long interview between Cristin and I about writing, New York and her forthcoming book Everything is Everything which will be released in January 2010 by Write Bloody Press. In today’s excerpt, Cristin talks about poetic boundaries, nostalgia and penis-shaped poetry.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

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I Like __ A Lot / 11 Comments
December 2nd, 2009 / 3:00 pm

I Like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz a Lot: Part 2

aptowicz_bookheadshot

I like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz so much that every day this week, I’ll be posting excerpts from a really long interview between Cristin and I about writing, New York and her forthcoming book Everything is Everything which will be released in January 2010 by Write Bloody Press. In today’s excerpt, Cristin talks about raping giraffes, slam poetry and bridging writing communities.

Part 1 | Part 3

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I Like __ A Lot / 12 Comments
December 1st, 2009 / 3:00 pm