2024 Peninsula Breakfast Featured Speaker

Roxane Gay

Author of Bad Feminist and Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body and Cultural Critic 

 

Roxane Gay is an author and cultural critic whose writing is widely revered. Her work garners international acclaim for its no-holds-barred exploration of feminism and social criticism.

Her collection of essays, Bad Feminist, is considered the quintessential exploration of modern feminism. In 2017, Roxane released her bestselling memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, which was called “luminous…intellectually rigorous and deeply moving” by the New York Times. Of her collection of short stories, Difficult Women, The Los Angeles Times says, “There’s a distinct echo of Angela Carter or Helen Oyeyemi at play; dark fables and twisted morality tales sit alongside the contemporary and the realistic…”

In 2020, Roxane released the short story Graceful Burdens, as an Amazon Single, as well as a graphic novel called The Sacrifice of Darkness. Roxane was the first Black woman to lead a Marvel title, writing the comic series World of Wakanda.

In addition to the Webby Award-winning podcast The Roxane Gay Agenda, she also began her own publishing imprint with Grove Atlantic, “Roxane Gay Books.” She has several books forthcoming including How to Be Heard, as well as The Year I Learned Everything, a young adult novel. She is also at work on television and film projects including a film adaptation of Hunger and a television adaptation of her comic book The Banks.

When she finds the time, Roxane dominates the occasional Scrabble tournament.