If you follow Roxanne Gay on Twitter, you know that she can be fierce.

If people are trolling or they come for her, as her bio says, she will clap right back.

Now, one time, I love the story, one time a man tweeted at her in Italian

and called her a man-hating homosexual, Roxanne responded in Italian and said, I read Italian,

you fucking petty, asshole, and that cemented my love for her. From the now famous bad

feminist to her recent memoir hunger, Roxanne Gaye has become

one of the most influential writers working today, and she's been on my dream guest list since I

started this podcast in 2016. So that is all to say, I was kind of nervous to interview her. But

as you will hear, she was incredibly open and generous, gentle and really just funny.

So we talk all about her writing, about her place in the queer canon, and we also talk about

love and sex, and how when it comes to writing about her own personal relationships, she doesn't do it.

She says she deliberately keeps the best parts of her life private.

From Luminary Media, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is LGBTQ and A.

A few years ago, you wrote that the older people get the more culturally invisible they become, as writers and as people.

Yes.

From the outside, looking at you, that seems to not be the case.

Well, yes. I mean, the things that are oftentimes generally true, there are always exceptions to the rule. And I happen to be entering the middle of my career at the middle of my life

instead of much earlier the way some people do. And so I'm experiencing a level of visibility that is deeply uncomfortable, but that is also

fairly abnormal for women my age.

And so that's very interesting and weird.

I also think it's abnormal for writers in general.

It's very abnormal for writers. One of the reasons I'm a writer is because I don't like attention.

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