Still, she is not completely free from expectation. “My favourite line is ‘I’m not an opinion vending machine’,” she says. Gay’s positioning as one of the most prominent members of the commentariat means that she is free from the scourge that many writers in the current digital landscape suffer from - one that plagues specifically female writers, and even more specifically black female writers: the requirement to churn out reactionary hot-takes in response to anything and everything. “I do not take it for granted,” she adds. But her proliferation isn’t simply down to pressure - she tells me she is doing “pretty much everything” she’s ever wanted to do as a writer. Her memoir, Hunger, was written shortly after and her anthology, Not That Bad, came out in 2018.
She then made history, with poet Yona Harvey, as Marvel’s first black female writers for the comic series Black Panther: World of Wakanda, in 2016, and then her collection of short stories, Difficult Women, was published in 2017. Her debut novel, An Untamed State (which is being adapted into a film) was released the same year as her career-making book, Bad Feminist. “And, you know, like, while I’m still agog, it’s also important that I get some things done while I’m here, for however long it lasts.”Īnd she means it. “That said, I’m also getting more comfortable with it because I recognise that it’s probably not going away this year or next, maybe the year after,” she says, with a laugh. I did not know there was anything beyond that to dream. I never dared imagine or dream anything beyond that. “To write a good book worthy of publication - that was the dream. But, despite being established for years now, Gay, born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1974 to middle-class Haitian immigrants, still seems wholly perplexed by her fame. “That’s the greatest compliment anyone has ever given me!” she says, with a laugh. The pair (both Libras, which Gay informs me she already knows) have both had incredible, career-defining years. I tell her that Bad Feminist was her very own Bodak Yellow - Cardi B’s breakout song that saw her transcend from an “internet person” to an IRL star. I, like several others, first became besotted by her writing on the internet and, over the past few years, have watched her dizzying ascent from my laptop. She is self-deprecating and self-assured, girlish and gritty, her name as synonymous with political commentary as it is pop culture. In her critically acclaimed book, Bad Feminist, Gay wrote that she is “full of contradictions”, and fans will be used to her ability to weave seamlessly between the dark and light, the yin to her own yang. I was like, ‘Oh, my God! My friends are amazing… They got a Channing Tatum lookalike!’” She adds that, while she can’t divulge anything about their project, she can add that he insisted they were paid equally - and that he smells like a pine forest.
This is elaborate, but I’m flattered that they would like go this far.’ So, my driver took us up in the hills and I was, like, ‘Wow, they rented a house in the hills because they know how much I love the hills?’ And I was feeling so much love for my friends as this driver was taking me to this destination and then we pull into a driveway and is standing on the balcony at the front of the house. “It was around my birthday, so I was, like, ‘My friends are playing a really good prank on me. “My agent called me, like, ‘Sit down before you read the rest of this email.’ I was, like, ‘Oh, my God, something really bad is about to happen.’ And she said, ‘Channing Tatum wants to collaborate with you.’ So then I orgasmed.” Her publicist and I snort in unison. But, as we sit in her UK publisher’s offices, her publicist stifling laughter in a corner as Gay regails us with the tale of how she wound up collaborating with Hollywood heart- throb Channing Tatum, it becomes apparent her deftness for storytelling isn’t limited to the page. She has countless bestselling books, a legion of adoring millennial fans (me among them) and endless critical acclaim.
Over the past few years, Gay’s “knack” for non-fiction has seen her firmly posited as one of the most important writers of our generation.
“Non-fiction I write because it turns out I have a knack for it,” she says, with a shrug. A fiction writer first and foremost, she tells me she would “only write fiction for the rest of her life” if she could. There is no medium through which Roxane Gay cannot tell a great story.