Roxane Gay

  • Like Whatever

    Art is problematic. Humans are problematic. Roxane Gay is a bad feminist. We know this, yet still we attack each other for liking Lil Wayne or Fifty Shades of Grey. Flavorwire‘s Sarah Seltzer wants us to stop telling women what they…

  • Getting Difference Wrong

    In an interview with Salon, the always-wise Roxane Gay offers her opinions on Bill Cosby, Lena Dunham, and the challenges of writing characters whose experiences differ from one’s own: We can imagine spaceships and different planets and aliens, but when…

  • Staring Our Idols in the Face

    For the Guardian, Roxane Gay sums up 2014 not so much as “public figures falling from grace… as we, the public, lowering our pedestals and staring our idols in the face.”

  • The Essay Makes a Comeback

    2014 has already been called “The Year of the Debut” as a way of recognizing all the amazing debut novels published over the last twelve months. Now Jason Diamond is calling 2014 “The Year of the Essay,” pointing out the…

  • The Rumpus Saturday Essay: Stain

    The Rumpus Saturday Essay: Stain

    It’s hard to remember why I was silent. Maybe, like some of the women only now reporting they were raped by Bill Cosby decades ago, I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed.

  • Good Victims

    We couldn’t remember his name. We couldn’t remember what he looked like. We couldn’t remember how many there were. We changed our story as we began to remember more details. We changed our story into something we could live with.…

  • 2014: The Year of the Debut

    Though he admits that “it can be a little silly to sum up an entire year of books,” Electric Literature’s Lincoln Michel suggests that “2014 might be the year of the debut.”

  • Up Next in the Rumpus Book Clubs

    There’s still time to get the December selections if you join either (or both!) the Rumpus Book and Poetry Book Clubs. What makes our book clubs special? Well, our first readers have a terrific track record of selecting truly amazing…

  • Good Riddance to the Goodbye-to-New-York Essay

    Good Riddance to the Goodbye-to-New-York Essay

    Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” has spawned a new literary genre: the personal screed about loving (or leaving) New York City.

  • Like Butter on Toast

    The Butter, The Toast’s new vertical run by Rumpus Essays Editor Emeritus Roxane Gay, has just launched. To present her latest venture, Gay wrote a Butter FAQ, stretching, in her typical style, from submission guidelines (spoiler: no guidelines!) to Nick Jonas,…

  • Still Thinking Through All This

    Though she admits to be “still thinking through all this,” Roxane Gay offers her thoughts on the Lena Dunham controversy on her Tumblr.

  • Weekly Geekery

    If you are a white man, your Internet is different than other internets. Hackers are going offline and embracing print. Content moderators keep your Internet from being worse. A comprehensive history of the reviled banner ad. Facebook is changing journalism.…