The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was this past weekend, April 22-23rd, at the University of Southern California. San Diego Literary Scene attended Roxane Gay's panel on Saturday afternoon in USC's Bovard Auditorium.
Roxane Gay's work includes the novel An Untamed State, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The novel has been optioned for a movie deal. Gay anticipates the screenplay will be completed by September. The movie will star Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and will be directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.
Gay is also author of the book Bad Feminist, World of Wakanda for Marvel Comics,
and Ayiti, a multi-genre collection. Her latest book is Difficult Women. Her memoir, Hunger, is set to be released in June. Gay is an associate professor of English at Purdue University, & is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. She received the PEN Center USA Freedom to Write Award, among other honors.
Roxane Gay was interviewed by L.A. Times critic-at-large, Alexander Chee. The conversation was lively, and covered a wide variety of topics - everything from Twitter, feminism, politics, and more. Gay talked a bit about her memoir, Hunger, in which she talks about her ways of coping with trauma, her struggles with weight and body image, and more. Gay stated that, like Lidia Yuknavitch’s book, The Chronology of Water, her memoir isn't linear. The memoir flows between past and present events. Gay stated about Hunger, "It was difficult to be honest with myself, about how I got to this place and how difficult it is to break free from it."
Gay & Chee discussed the fact that Gay's early work had been rejected multiple times. She said that, when she first started shopping Difficult Women around, no publisher would take it on. However, once it was finally published, the short story collection received wide acclaim. Gay talked about feeling vindicated, and joked about now feeling smug because of this. When Chee asked Gay why so many of her stories are dark and painful, and why such stories are important. She responded, “We live in a culture where women aren't believed, where people are surprised by the scope of traumas women suffer. I'm going to keep writing these stories. I do it because it feels necessary. We have a president who grabs women by the ... and a lot of women voted for him.”
More info:
http://www.roxanegay.com/
https://www.difficult-women.com/Labels: Author Appearances
