WRITER

Roxane Gay

1974 - Today

Photo of Roxane Gay

Icon of person Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974) is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017). Gay is the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Roxane Gay has received more than 2,370,502 page views. Her biography is available in 22 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 18 in 2019). Roxane Gay is the 7,115th most popular writer (down from 6,388th in 2019), the 16,746th most popular biography from United States (down from 15,854th in 2019) and the 1,149th most popular American Writer.

Memorability Metrics

  • 2.4M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 32.69

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 22

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 1.55

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 4.18

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Hunger
Biography, African American women, Overweight women
“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.” In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.
2016
Opinions
2023
Ayiti
Fiction, short stories (single author)
1918
Untamed State
Fiction, suspense, Fiction, thrillers, general, Haiti, fiction
2014
Bad Feminist
Race awareness in motion pictures, Conduct of life, African Americans in mass media
2014
Difficult Women
Fiction, women, Women -- Fiction, Short stories, American
306 pages ; 21 cm
2017

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Roxane Gay ranks 7,115 out of 7,302. Before her are Lev Grossman, Julia Serano, Fatima Massaquoi, Amor Towles, Monica Ali, and Zehra Doğan. After her are Daniel O. Fagunwa, Maria Parr, Francisco Villarroel, Ian Brennan, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Lui Morais.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1974, Roxane Gay ranks 804. Before her are Roman Hamrlík, Ravish Kumar, Sergey Ryazansky, Fermín IV, İbrahim Üzülmez, and Sergi Escobar. After her are Manuel Martínez Gutiérrez, Danilo Hondo, Muzzy Izzet, Dario Cioni, Venelina Veneva-Mateeva, and Antti Sumiala.

Others Born in 1974

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Roxane Gay ranks 16,746 out of 20,380. Before her are Callie Thorne (1969), Loral O'Hara (1983), Mark Johnson (1957), Ashlynn Yennie (1985), Louie Gohmert (1953), and Nika Futterman (1969). After her are Amber Neben (1975), Mary E. Peters (1948), Joe Smith (1975), Lonzo Ball (1997), Chad Gray (1971), and Grace Caroline Currey (1996).

Others born in United States

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Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, Roxane Gay ranks 1,149. Before her are Elizabeth Hand (1957), Diablo Cody (1978), Adam Johnson (1967), Lev Grossman (1969), Julia Serano (1967), and Amor Towles (1964). After her are Ian Brennan (1978), Scott Lynch (1978), Tom Bergeron (1955), Marissa Meyer (1984), James Vanderbilt (1975), and Vanessa Taylor (1970).

American born Writers

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