Interview: Roxane Gay Talks Truth, Flash, and PANK

I've noticed that men enjoy dressing in drag on Halloween so I thought I would write a story about a pack of hairy men reveling in the wearing of women's clothing. It ended up being kind of grotesque which made me quite happy.

You are affiliated with several publications such as co-editor of PANK and a contributor to HTMLGIANT. What was the spark that first ignited your interest in writing in a genre that few African Americans frequent?

I've always loved writing and my interests have been largely shaped by my experiences. I don't think it's that literary fiction or literary/cultural criticism are genres rarely frequented by African Americans. Rather, I think it's a matter of visibility where few African Americans have the platform to be visible, to be heard nor do I think anyone is trying to address this problem. I have been extraordinarily lucky to be given the opportunities to work on PANK and contribute to HTMLGIANT.

How does being an editor for PANK effect the type of work that you submit? Do you think being an editor helps you understand what editors and publishers look for?

Being an editor has made me, I hope, a more conscientious writer, in terms of submitting stronger work, and following submission guidelines. I absolutely think there's a strong correlation between editing and knowing what other editors are looking for as a writer. I pay more attention to publications, what they've published in the past, what they might publish in the future because I want to put work out there that reflects an understanding of where it belongs.

In the last 5 years what writers have been some of the biggest influences? Do you have any writings that you can make correlations to their works?

I love Michael Chabon and I've been pretty obsessed with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for quite some time. That's probably older than five years but it's a pretty important book to me. I read a lot and I think a part of me has been influenced by almost everyone I read. Writers like Paula Bomer, Mary Gaitskill, Alicia Erian, xTx, Sean Doyle and others, have all helped me to find the stories I need to be writing and try to make them as good as I can. One story with a direct correlation to another writer is my story Do You Have a Place For Me, which appeared in Spork and which was inspired by a poem of the same name by xTx. My story La Negra Blanca was a retelling, of sorts, of Nella Larsen's Passing. If you look hard enough, you can see all kinds of influences in my work.

On your website "I Have Become Accustomed to Rejection" I noticed that you have well over 50 works of fiction. What's your published to rejected ratio? How many of your rejected works later became published?

Duotrope tells me that 19.67% of my submissions are accepted. Everything I write gets published eventually.

While reading "In the Event of my Father's Death" your characters were very universal. They could have been any ethnicity without taking away from the story. What type of frame of mind did you have when writing about a fathers immoral ritual being passed to his son?

I generally write stories that could be any kind of people because most of the truest stories are, as you note, universal. When I wrote that story, I was thinking about the ways in which parents influence their children for better or worse and the son having this unspoken encounter with his dead father's mistress was both kind of shocking and yet kind of not. In my mind, it was a moment of comfort in addition to being a moment of sadness. I wouldn't characterize any of the father or son's behaviors as immoral, mostly because it's just not that simple.

How do you balance writing, editing, and working on you Ph. D?

Black magic. I am done with my Ph.D. though so that's nice. I'm now a faculty member at Eastern Illinois University.

Do you have a process or ritual that you use before you sit down and write a piece?

Not really. When I get the urge, I just go crazy.

Any words of wisdom or advice that you can offer a writer playing with the idea of getting into flash fiction?

Don't limit yourself to only writing flash. Don't write flash because you think it's easier. Writing a good very short story can be one of the biggest writing challenges. Find one story and tell it well, tell it true.