Literary superstar Roxane Gay is launching a newsletter and a book club.
Gay, author of Bad Feminist and Hunger, will debut The Audacity, a Substack newsletter, on Jan. 11, she announced.
“People curate what they put from their lives into the public sphere but a good writer makes what they curate one hell of a story,” Gay wrote. “That’s what I hope to do with this newsletter—tell one hell of a story about the world we’re living in, the culture we consume, the things that bring me joy, the things that infuriate me, the things I think we should talk about.”
The newsletter will also feature essays by emerging writers on a biweekly basis.
The Audacity will also be home to Gay’s The Audacious Book Club, which will focus on “underrepresented American writers.” Gay revealed the entire 2021 lineup for the club, which will feature one book per month.
It kicks off in January with Black Futures, an anthology on Black creativity and culture edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham. Torrey Peters’ debut novel, Detransition, Baby, is the February pick.
Books by Brandon Hobson, Gabriela Garcia, and Ashley C. Ford will also be featured in the club, which closes out 2021 with Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So, who died earlier this month at age 28.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
