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.

I Like Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz A Lot: Part 1

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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.

Part 2 | Part 3

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I Like __ A Lot / 11 Comments
November 30th, 2009 / 4:57 pm

Q & A #1

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Question 1:
I interned for a literary agency for a while. Do you think that agents are necessary for all kinds of writing, or that in some cases you can go straight to the publisher? (With fiction, I think it’s pretty well established that you need an agent no matter what.)

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Behind the Scenes / 42 Comments
November 25th, 2009 / 6:54 pm

New Feature: Q & A

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Writers (both novice and experienced) often have questions about writing, publishing, etiquette and more. We’d like to try and help. If you have questions,  leave a comment with your question(s) in this post or send me an e-mail. Anonymous questions are fine. Over time, we’ll post answers to your queries with insight from some of the HTML Giant contributors and hopefully offer a small bit of sanity to the craziness that is publishing.

Ask away!

Behind the Scenes / 37 Comments
November 19th, 2009 / 4:39 pm

DIY Publishing

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In a recent blog post at PANK, a writer shared some very interesting thoughts about his experiences (both good and bad) with self-publishing his first novel. In the comments, another writer remarked that the DIY, self-publishing approach is quite celebrated in the independent music scene while self-publishing is rather maligned in the writing world. That was a really interesting observation and he’s right. Musicians will upload their music to the Internet and sell homemade CDs out of the trunk of their car and they become folk heroes for their efforts. When a writer stands up and says hey, I’ve got this book and I am my own publisher, he might as well run around the room shouting, “I am a leper.” We (generally speaking) judge people who self-publish.

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Behind the Scenes / 206 Comments
November 12th, 2009 / 10:00 am

PSA: Rose Metal Press Chapbook Contest

The Rose Metal Press Fourth Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest submission period begins October 15 and ends December 1, 2009. The 2009 judge will be Dinty W. Moore. The winner will have his/her chapbook published in summer 2010, with an introduction by the contest judge. During the submission period, please email your 25–40 page double-spaced manuscript of short short stories under 1000 words to rosemetalpress@gmail.com with a $10 reading fee via Paypal or check. You can find the link to pay the fee here.

And while I promise it won’t be all chick talk all the time, on the heels of the Publisher’s Weekly discussion I’ll also just mention that Rose Metal has received very few manuscripts from women writers. They’d really like to see more balance in the submission pool. Send your damn chapbooks in, bitches.

Presses / 4 Comments
November 4th, 2009 / 1:31 am
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Publisher’s Weekly has compiled their best books of 2009 and it has been pointed out, in a few places, that there are no women writers on the list. There are lots of other exclusions on that list too. Poor poetry. I’ve only read two of the books on the list—Await Your Reply and Shop Class as Soul Craft, both of which are fantastic—so I can’t really speak to the rest of the list but as I tried to think about major (mainstream) books written by women in 2009, the only two that come to mind are Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs (which I am currently reading, which I respect, which I do not love) and Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood. As I’ve thought about which books I would include on my own Top 10 list, none of them were mainstream books but about half were written by women. (My list, includes, in no order: American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell, Scorch Atlas by that one guy, Light Boxes by Shane Jones, AM/PM by Amelia Gray,  and How to Leave Hiealeah by Jennine Capo Crucet.)

Were no great (mainstream) books written by women in 2009? What would appear on your Top 10 list for 2009?

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You’re Not the Boss of Me

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I teach Composition and Scientific & Technical Communication at a technological university which is a very interesting and fun challenge because the majority of the students at my university are not predisposed, at least in temperament, to the liberal arts.

As I grade student work, I often find myself offering students feedback by way of writing rules or myths I’ve long incorporated into my repertoire to guide them in revision, etc. Last night, as I labored over a fairly problematic stack of technical reports, I had to stop myself because I was feeling very uncomfortable about simply regurgitating the same old writing rules without really thinking through their merit.

A couple weeks ago, I had students read an article about Expressive Technical Writing as a means of introducing them to different avenues of scholarship in technical communication that go beyond the material traditionally taught in technical writing courses. After reading the article, the students wrote a brief reflection (without any specific guidelines from me) on what they thought about the idea of incorporating expressive writing into engineering communication. Sometimes when you ask students to write reflections they’ll turn in meandering Dear Diary type writing that is lacking a clear sense of purpose beyond, “I am writing this because I have no choice.”

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Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes / 28 Comments
November 2nd, 2009 / 3:59 pm
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Writer M.J. Nicholls complains about magazines who don’t accept everything “good” that comes their way.  He’s finished with magazines like decomP and elimae because they send form rejections. With regard to PANK he says:

I DON’T SEE WHY the site publishes LESS than it RECIEVES. Surely the basic rules of SUPPLY and DEMAND apply here? If a slue of challenging and interesting work is offered – publish it. Give the reader a CHOICE. Stop setting your own agenda and being so FUCKING FUSSY.

I shall… leave it at that.


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Poetry for Poetry Haters: The Northville Review

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It is very timely that during Mean Week, The Northville Review‘s Poetry for Poetry Haters issue has gone live. Northville editor Erin Fitzgerald interviewed the issue’s guest editor Whitney Freemesser who explains why she hates poetry.

Why do you hate poetry?
I don’t like frou-frou OH SO DEEP descriptions of things. If something is black, say it is black. Don’t say it’s inky jet ebony.

As people who received a rejection slip for this issue discovered, you do actually like some poetry. The example we gave out was Richard Brautigan’s At the California Institute of Technology. Can you talk a little bit about why you do like this poem, and maybe name some others?
I like it because it’s simple and not overwrought with emotion. We don’t have to listen to lines and lines of the same sentiment repeated thirteen different ways. As for other poems that I like, I like most of Brautigan’s work. Also, there’s a poetry anthology called “Pictures That Storm Inside My Head”, edited by Richard Peck. I like the title poem from that one, though I don’t remember who wrote it.

Do you think that eliminating repetitive and overwrought elements might be the key to getting people to actually like poetry?
Well, it would make ME like poetry a lot more. But I’m not the usual poetry audience. I don’t have the time/energy/patience to listen to it. It’s like listening to my son try to tell a story – it takes him a few tries to get started, so he’ll repeat the same phrase over and over – and I just want to yell “GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!” And then it’ll turn out to be something about Wii Sports Resort or Phineas and Ferb.

Read more of this interview here and enjoy poetry from Ryan Bradley, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Howie Good and Daniel Romo.

Mean / 44 Comments
October 27th, 2009 / 3:22 pm

Glimmer Stain

Glimmer Train used to be a decent, if not rather traditional literary magazine but in recent years, they’ve really pushed the limits of credibility running contests every single month. To my mind, a contest is only meaningful if it is the exception rather than the rule. Winning one of their ubiquitous contests is like winning $2 on a $2 scratch ticket or a free small soda during McDonald’s Monopoly promotion. Their newest contest, for the Best Start to a story, quickly prompted an appropriate amount of ridicule and yet we all know people will continue to submit their stories and entry fees ($10-$20 per entry) to Glimmer Train in the fairly futile hope that it means something. At what point do we concede that Glimmer Train has become a vanity press?

Mean / 56 Comments
October 26th, 2009 / 1:53 pm