Roxane Gay
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On Not “Getting Over It”
I am well aware, for example, that voter suppression is a serious problem. If we’re going to consider degrees of magnitude, which is a masturbatory exercise at best, voter suppression is the more serious problem. Or is it? For Salon, our…
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The Rumpus Interview with Monica Drake
Monica Drake, author of Clown Girl and now The Stud Book, discusses the physicality of characters’ bodies, the complicated issues women face while aging, and the crucial nature of writing communities.
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“What the Hell Is A ‘Writer of Color,’ Anyway?”
As part of her latest push to get the literary community talking seriously about diversity, our inimitable essays editor Roxane Gay has a piece up at the Nation about some of the thrilling, confounding, challenging books by writers of color out right…
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Roxane Gay Fights the Good Fight
The Los Angeles Times has a great overview of our essays editor Roxane Gay’s latest efforts to spread diversity in the publishing world: “We can’t think of gender without also considering race, class, sexuality and ability,” Gay says. “As long as…
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“This Novel Treads So Finely Between Hope and Despair”
Our essays editor Roxane Gay reviewed Mitchell S. Jackson’s The Residue Years for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, and she makes it sound like one hell of a book: There is warmth and wit, and a hard-won wisdom about the…
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Staving-off-Despair Roundup
When there’s an injustice as great a man walking free after killing an unarmed teenager, at least we have writing to turn to. Our essays editor Roxane Gay has done some of that writing for Salon in a piece about the George…
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The Rumpus Interview with Terry Tempest Williams
In fifty-four sections, Terry Tempest Williams not only tries to gain a greater understanding of her mother, she explores her faith, her marriage, her role as a woman in the world, and much more.
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The Real Reason We’re Shocked About Paula Deen
When the transcript of Food Network host Paula Deen’s trial for workplace harassment was leaked, the reaction was nearly universal: “Hoo boy, is that woman unbelievably racist!” Or was there something else that bothered us about Deen’s behavior? In an…
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Step Aside, Dashiell Hammett
If you like your detectives hardboiled and your femmes fatale, you’ll dig Flavorwire’s list of ten essential neo-noir authors. From Dennis Lehane (author of Shutter Island and Mystic River) to Lindsay Hunter (the heir apparent to Mary Gaitskill’s throne), these writers…
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“so I took a deep breath and I jumped”
Roxane Gay isn’t just for adults. Rookie Mag’s online issue, currently themed “Age of Innocence,” just posted the new(ish — the original was published in Prairie Schooner) beautiful story on teenage love and two different “first” times. So far the…
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Boston Marathon Roundup
If you’re looking for a token of solace after the Boston marathon bombings, please check out Roxane Gay’s words if you haven’t already. And Thomas Page McBee reflects on ways to help when feeling helpless. At the Guardian, Rumpus columnist Steve…
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Stunned Silence
What wearies me is how often I have found myself stunned and silent in recent years. What especially wearies me is having such a finely honed vocabulary for tragedy.