Best-selling author Roxane Gay announced the launch of her very own publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books.
The imprint is in partnership with Grove Atlantic and her editor, Amy Hundley.
Roxane Gay Books will publish three books per year and is currently open to accepting fiction, nonfiction, and memoirs submission, especially for unrepresented authors.
“There are so many barriers and so many gates,” she said to The New York Times. “Let’s take them down.”
Grove will offer a paid, one-year fellowship program that would serve as a “crash course” in publishing for applicants without access to such jobs through traditional pathways.
“She’s really interested in queer voices, she’s really interested in feminist voices, she’s really interested in voices on body size,” Hundley said, “all kinds of different conversations that are really exciting right now, and I think are the future.”
Turner Classic Movies recently released a documentary about Body Images. Body image activist Gay was one of its contributors. During a recent interview, she spoke out against fatphobia.
“First of all, you know Black women’s bodies have always been exploited, reviled and/or coveted secretly. So when we see Black women on screen, we tend to see the fat, sassy Black friend or co-worker or we see the object of desire but we don’t ever know anything more about her other than that she’s the object of desire,” Gay says to MadameNoire.
“Black women on screen are not given any sort of identity or self-actualization. They don’t have any f*cking personality, even. Beyond sassiness. All we know is that they’re there to be the sidekick. Our fat bodies don’t get good wardrobe. We don’t get the sort of attention that other actors on screen are going to get. And it shows and it’s ridiculous. So I do think it’s important that we point out that this is not just fatphobia, it’s misogynoir.”
