Features
Best Selling Author Roxane Gay Talks About Writing, Body Shaming & Diversity in Publishing at the 2016 PEN World Voices
If you’re a writer, or interested in writing then I have a gift for you! So, this year, best selling author, Roxane Gay delivered the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture – the 2016 PEN World Voices Festival’s grand finale. You don’t know who Roxane Gay is? Don’t worry, I’ll tell ya! {Or you can check out her website here}
Roxane Gay is a professor of English, a writer, social commentator and the author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist. She is also one of my absolutely favourite follows on Twitter
Anyway, so back to the lecture, {which you absolutely have to watch, because it’s VERY INTERESTING} Roxane delivers an inspiring and emotional lecture about body shaming, being a woman of colour in the publishing world, and her upcoming memoir, Hunger.
After the lecture, she sits with Saeed Jones {Writer, Poet & Editor of Buzzfeed Culture} and they talk about more issues of diversity – where Roxane says she’s actually tired of panels where all they do is talk about the absence of colour in a predominantly white industry. Less talking and more doing!
Okay, enough talking. I’ll leave you guys to watch. A little heads up, though… the video is a little over an hour long, but it’s totally worth it.
P.S: there’s a lot of references to Beyonce‘s Lemonade so if you’re a BeyHiver… *wink*
Here goes:
