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We are served by happy endings… of course a happy ending can mean so many things and in that essay I’m trying to broaden our understanding of happy endings. RG: I don’t know that a happy ending is impermanent. I wonder, who is served by the happy ending? And is the happy ending a release from something? I wonder if that is the problem in of itself-to hold any one emotion in place dishonors the movement and shifty nature of eMOTIONs.
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By avoiding the extraneous, I hope I am letting the key moments in my writing run free.ĪW: In Bad Feminist you write about happy endings and the need to complicate happiness in the essay “ The Smooth Surfaces of Idyll.” Out of all the emotions, we seem to be so very much caught up on happiness, to be in pursuit of it, and it’s ability to be maintained is some marker of achievement. RG: I’m always thinking about what is most essential so I try to focus on that. Instead, I have an idea-a word, an image, a moment, and I dive into the center of what I need to say.ĪW: How do you capture an idea/moment in your writing without letting it be held captive? It’s not so much that I split something open. RG: I spend a lot of time thinking before I ever commit words to the page. Judgment cannot be the singular measure of our work.ĪW: How do you begin, how do you split something open? Judgment can be so detrimental, though, when it prevents a writer from trusting themselves and their craft. It helps to remind us that though, ideally, we write for ourselves, when we publish, we are also writing to be read and we should, at some point in our process, consider how the reader will experience our work. Roxane Gay: Judgment can be the measure of discipline we need to improve our craft. In this interview, we get an intimate glimpse into Roxane’s thoughts regarding process, judgment, risk and disclosure, whether or not she lies or invents, and so much more.Īrisa White: How does “judgment” work to a writer’s benefit and to their detriment? “I just sit down and write when I want to write, or as is the case all too often, when there is a deadline and I need to write.” As writers, listening and honoring your basic need to write is a discipline, in and of itself. “I don’t have a practice or ritual,” she said. Roxane is an associate professor at Purdue University, co-editor of PANK, a non-profit literary arts collective, and she is a frequent Salon contributor, and the editor of “The Butter Essay Series,” at Ĭurious about her writing practice, I asked Roxane if she has rituals to get started. Her work has been nominated for the 46th Annual NAACP Image Awards in Outstanding Literary Work in nonfiction and fiction. She is the author of Ayiti, Bad Feminist, and An Untamed State.
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A dynamic provocateur and cultural critic, Roxane Gay was the judge for the Kore Press Annual Short Fiction Award, 2015.