What does it feel like to have them both see published life at the same time? We’re seeing it as the year of Roxane Gay, but both of these books must be the culmination of years of writing, observing, thinking. Q: This is indisputably your year: a critically acclaimed debut novel, and an equally successful essay collection of cultural criticism that honestly, humorously and accessibly captures the multiplicity of your views. Steffens is a freelance journalist whose author interviews and book reviews have appeared in Time, the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, Time Out and the U.K.’s Independent on Sunday. Gay currently teaches creative writing at Purdue University. Her debut novel, An Untamed State, and a collection of essays, Bad Feminist, were published this year to critical acclaim.
This Q&A originally appeared in the fall 2014 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.ĭaneet Steffens ’82 interviewed Roxane Gay ’92, a writer and cultural commentator who has been published everywhere from The New York Times, The Guardian and The Nation to Slate, Salon and The Rumpus. Author of Bad Feminist and NY Times columnist
