Roxane Gay

Following her national book tour in support of Hunger, Gay said she found press around the book "to be very challenging, because people just don’t know how to talk about fat." In June 2017, Australian website Mamamia published an interview with Gay, revealing numerous details about how they prepared for her visit, which they described as a "logistical nightmare" because of the apparent inconsequence of her weight. On Twitter, Gay later described these preparations, including questions like “Will she fit into the office lift?” as both "cruel and humiliating". In an interview with The New York Times, Gay stated the controversial event was "helpful, in that I think people get to see, in real time, what fat-phobia looks like and just how careless people can be in considering that fat people deserve dignity. So I suppose it’s a useful example of why I wrote the book."

At a February 2019 speaking event at USC, in the Q&A, supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party criticized co-speaker Amanda Nguyen's work in the U.S. government during the War on Terror; in response, Gay defended Nguyen on Twitter.

In 2019, Gay and Medium went on to create a new publication called "Gay Magazine", specialising in cultural criticism.

In 2019, Gay partnered with Tressie McMillan Cottom to create a black feminist podcast titled "Hear To Slay," which was set to feature influential black women as guests, including Stacey Abrams, Gabrielle Union, and Ava DuVernay.

In November 2019, Gay shared news of her engagement to Debbie Millman.

Gay was an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University for four years before joining Purdue University as an associate professor of English. In 2018, she announced that she was leaving Purdue to become a visiting professor at Yale University.

Gay was the editor of the anthology titled Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. The collection, published in 2018 by HarperCollins, features essays from Gay and 30 other authors, including actresses Ally Sheedy and Gabrielle Union.

Gay has a forthcoming book, How to Be Heard, originally set to be published in 2018 by TED Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. However, in January 2017 Gay announced she was pulling the book from Simon & Schuster due to her objections to alt-right journalist Milo Yiannopoulos receiving a book deal from another Simon & Schuster imprint.

On February 22, 2018, on Twitter, Gay offered to write Batgirl after the departure of Joss Whedon, who stepped down as the film's writer and director.

In April 2018, Gay partnered with Medium to create a month-long pop-up magazine called Unruly Bodies. The magazine explored the relationship people share with their bodies, through an anthology of essays by 25 writers (including Gay herself).

In April 2018, Gay shared that she had undergone sleeve gastrectomy, a weight-loss surgery that removes 85% of the stomach, in January 2018.

The series' cancellation was confirmed in June 2017 by Gay, coming just two days after the premiere of the trailer for the Black Panther movie. The last issue released in March 2017. Marvel stated no official reason for the cancellation, however, feminist tech site The Mary Sue pointed to a connection with Marvel's knock against "diversity titles" and the Marvel VP David Gabriel's statement that "people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales."

In 2017, Gay published Difficult Women, a collection of fictional short stories that highlight women who have lives that differ from society’s spectrum of a normal life. Each story follows a different character and her journey through either a traumatic experience or what makes her different from societal norms. The women are seen as "difficult" because they push the boundaries of society's portrayal of the perfect woman.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body was released in June 2017. Throughout, Gay discusses her experience with weight, body image, and building a positive relationship with food, particularly following her experience as a childhood victim of sexual violence. Gay described the book as a testimony of "what it’s like to live in a world that tried to discipline unruly bodies." The memoir received wide acclaim, praised by critics as "remarkable...ferociously honest," "arresting and candid," and "intimate and vulnerable."

Gay was the guest judge and guest editor of The Masters Review annual fiction anthology in 2017.

In July 2016, Gay and poet Yona Harvey were announced as writers for Marvel Comics' World of Wakanda, a spin-off from the company's Black Panther title, making them the first black women to be lead writers for Marvel.

Gay was featured in a five-minute segment of This American Life on June 17, 2016, talking about her body, and how she is perceived as a fat person.

Roxane Gay was featured in the 2016 book In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs.

Gay has been a US Guardian columnist from 2015 - 2018.

In 2014, Gay published her debut novel, An Untamed State, which centers around Mireille Duval Jameson, a Haitian-American woman who is kidnapped for ransom. The novel explores the interconnected themes of race, privilege, sexual violence, family, and the immigrant experience. An Untamed State is often referred to as a fairy tale because of its structure and style, especially in reference to the opening sentence, "Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones," and the author's exploration of the American dream and courtship of Mireille's parents.

Gay's collection of essays, Bad Feminist, was released in 2014 to widespread acclaim; it addresses both cultural and political issues, and became a New York Times best-seller. A Time magazine reviewer dubbed Bad Feminist "a manual on how to be human" and called Gay the "gift that keeps on giving." In a 2014 interview with the magazine, Gay explained her role as a feminist and how it has influenced her writing: "In each of these essays, I’m very much trying to show how feminism influences my life for better or worse. It just shows what it’s like to move through the world as a woman. It’s not even about feminism per se, it’s about humanity and empathy."

Gay was the editor of The Butter, an online feminist writing site and sister site to The Toast, from November 2014 to August 2015. The Butter featured writing on a wide variety of subjects, including disability, literature, family, music, among others. The Butter ceased publishing in August 2015 with Gay stating she was "simply stretched too thin."

She also edited the book Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies. In addition to her regular contributions to Salon and the now defunct HTMLGiant, her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, Bookforum, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation and The New York Times Book Review.

Gay began her undergraduate studies at Yale University but dropped out in her junior year to pursue a relationship in Arizona. She later completed her undergraduate degree at Vermont College of Norwich University and also earned an MA with an emphasis in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. In 2010, Gay received a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University; her dissertation is titled Subverting the Subject Position: Toward a New Discourse About Students as Writers and Engineering Students as Technical Communicators. Dr. Ann Brady served as her dissertation advisor.

Gay published a short story collection Ayiti (2011), then two books in 2014: the novel An Untamed State and the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), leading one Time Magazine reviewer to declare, "Let this be the year of Roxane Gay." The review noted of her inclusive style: "Gay’s writing is simple and direct, but never cold or sterile. She directly confronts complex issues of identity and privilege, but it’s always accessible and insightful."

After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in the fall 2010 at Eastern Illinois University, where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, in addition to her teaching duties, she was a contributing editor for Bluestem magazine and she also founded Tiny Hardcore Press. Gay worked at Eastern Illinois University until the end of the 2013–14 academic year, and was an associate professor of creative writing in the MFA program at Purdue University from August 2014 until 2018. Gay announced her departure from Purdue in October, 2018, voicing concerns about the fairness of her compensation and noting Purdue had failed to address the issue. For the spring of 2019, Gay is serving as visiting professor at Yale University.

Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974) is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).