Culture and LGBTQ writer Roxane Gay is getting married!
Roxane Gay is getting married! Or more precisely, one of our favorite LGBT writers is getting engaged to fellow writer and artist Debbie Millman. (But that’s pretty much where it will lead, right?)
Millman had made the announcement on her Instagram page, declaring: “I met a girl who loves to write and is really into Beyoncé.”
“We went on some dates; we fell in love. And now she is my fiancé,” Millman declared.
Gay and Millman: An engagement
For those who don’t know her yet, Gay is well known for being an author of the essay collection Bad Feminist, the Hunger memoir, and the short story collection Difficult Women.
She also joined up with poet Yona Harvey in July 2016 as writers for Marvel Comics’ World of Wakanda, a spin-off their Black Panther comic book.
Meanwhile, Millman hosts the podcast Design Matters and was the cofounder of the world’s first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Among those who congratulated the pair for their engagement was presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who tweeted: “Sending you both my love!”
Likewise, playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, singer John Legend, and actress Amber Tamblyn lauded the couple for their engagement.
Roxane Gay takes on the teaching life
Born on 15 October 1974 in Omaha, Nebraska, Gay came from a family of Haitian descent. After attending high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, she went on to Yale University.
However, she dropped out in her junior year to have a relationship in Arizona. She went on to finish her undergraduate degree at Vermont College of Norwich University.
She got her MA in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a PhD in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University.
She began teaching in 2010 at the Eastern Illinois University. She moved to the MFA program at Purdue University in 2014 as an associate professor of creative writing.
She left Purdue over compensation issues in 2018. In spring 2019, she served as visiting professor at Yale University.
Roxane Gay: Her writing career
While teaching at EIU, she was the contributing editor for Bluestem magazine and founded Tiny Hardcore press.
She published her first short story collection in 2011, Ayiti. and then came out with her first novel, Untamed State in 2014.
In that same year, she also came out with Bad Feminist. Both books received critical acclaim from reviewers.
Following her stint at Marvel comics, she published her collection of short fiction, Difficult Women, in 2017. In that same year as well, she published her memoir, Hunger.
From 2015 to 2018, she has also been a columnist for The Guardian.
For this year, Gay had partnered with Medium to create “Gay Magazine” focusing on cultural criticism. She also partnered partnered with Tressie McMillan Cottom to create a black feminist podcast titled “Hear To Slay.”