When I broach the subject of dislike for journalists, she rebuts: “I don’t hate journalists ,” her tone serious. Keen to give a good interview, I have a fastidious etiquette list drawn up from pointers I’ve come across in her writing. A mega-fan, walking through the door of her hotel room in London Bridge with a backpack full of her books, I’m hyper-aware of this fact. This week, everyone on this side of the Atlantic either wants to speak to her or hear her speak.īut I’m speaking to Roxane the day after she talked about hating journalism as an industry, at a Q&A with Liv Little, gal-dem’s founder and editor-in-chief at the Southbank Centre. Her 2014 essay collection Bad Feminist was devoured by academics and the general public alike, so much so that the year following its release Reductress satirised in an article that if you hadn’t read Bad Feminist yet, you were a bad feminist. A New York Times bestselling feminist commentator, whose bibliography hones in on bodies, race, and sexual violence, Roxane has become a staple in the 21st-century feminist canon.
Roxane Gay is in demand – so her first visit to the UK has not necessarily been a relaxing one.
