These are the kind of things I hear all day, every day, and it’s even worse in email. I think sometimes when people say, “Leave it alone, ignore it,” they want to pretend these terrible things are not being said, and this is the reality of being a woman online and you need to bring attention to it. I don’t think I enjoy it-it’s just a compulsion. I’m curious as to why you enjoy engaging with them. I’ve noticed you respond to your haters on Twitter rather often. Just remember to once in awhile write, in addition to just being part of it all. Your writing career and your publishing career are different and neither are the measure of your self worth. Just remember that there’s a difference between writing ad publishing.
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I think it’s totally fine to hold that magic because that magic is real. What’s your advice for aspiring writers in New York that still find the city magical? I don’t always need to be around other writers.
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I do appreciate that by living here I just get to write and not have to be part of that grinding I see a lot of writers do, just by virtue of being there and being around other writers. I don’t know what you want me to do other than write. People always ask, Why are you so prolific? Well, I live in rural Indiana. Granted, it requires travel, but I still feel like part of the conversation. Sometimes there’s envy when you see al the events hapPENing, events I would love to go to, but I feel just as able to participate in literary culture from where I live. I don’t really feel any negativity toward being outside of it. I’m 41 I’ve worked too hard.Īre there are negatives or positives being outside of the New York lit bubble? I love New York, I love visiting New York, and I’ll always sPENd time in New York, but I also like space, so I’ll never be able to force myself to live in a cramped apartment. In your essay in the leaving-New-York anthology Goodbye to All That, you referred to New York as the city that got away. There is this glamorous idea of the New York writer and whenever I’m in New York I am always impressed by the fancy people, but there are those of us who do live outside of New York and somehow manage to write. People have this misapprehension that all writers live in New York and that’s simply not true. Not a week goes by I don’t get requests that say, stop by our studio! I think, Well that’s going to take a very long flight. Do a lot of people assume you live in New York City?Īll the time. You’re a professor at Purdue University in Indiana. This is the first time I’ve written something that I think might be useful to other women. And I also have boundaries about things I will or will not write about.
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The fear is always there so I live with it the best I can. I generally write pretending other people will never read my work, but this work requires a level of vulnerability that makes me uncomfortable, so that’s a challenge. I can write it easily, but it’s imagining other people reading. Writing the book has been really difficult, more difficult than I thought. It looks at trauma and obesity and what it’s like to live in this world with an unruly, overweight body. Hunger is a memoir essentially of my body. Your memoir Hunger is due out later this year. They think, But we invited you, and they think that’s enough, so sometimes I’ve had to say, Well you’ll have to find someone else because I just don’t feel like doing it under those circumstances.
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So I always try to find out who else I’m appearing with at events so I can be sure I’m not put into that supremely awkward position. Because they’re not doing their part-they’re doing the bare minimum. It’s something I always think about because it gets tiring to always be the only person of color or the only woman and to see organizers think that’s okay, to see they think they’re doing their part. I know you’re asked to speak at conferences often-how do you deal with the pervasive issue of all-male, all-white panels? Freedom of speech is something every writer holds sacred so it becomes even more important to participate. I think that it’s always exciting to see international voices celebrated, so I wanted to be a part of it. Why is the PEN World Voices Festival intriguing to you? You’re traveling to a lot of literary gatherings this year. We spoke with Gay about living off the popular literature grid, pushing diversity and the problem with woke men. This year’s weeklong spring festival explores the theme On Mexico through dozens of literary events-including a discussion on Chicano/a culture, a celebration of female Mexican authors and a conversation with Salman Rushdie-and culminates with Gay’s lecture on Sunday, May 1. This weekend, she comes to town as the keynote speaker for the giant PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. Beloved novelist, essayist, blogger, professor and Twitter queen Roxane Gay became a household name with her wryly philosophical and resolute book Bad Feminist.