What Can We Expect From Roxane Gay’s New Imprint?

Yesterday, Bad Feminist and Hunger writer Roxane Gay made an important announcement: 

I am excited to share that I am starting a publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books in partnership with @groveatlantic and my amazing editor @amy_hundley https://t.co/cnTJBtz9Xr pic.twitter.com/t8vzM1FPil

— roxane gay (@rgay) May 26, 2021

Roxane Gay Books, a Grove Atlantic imprint, will produce three titles a year by authors who are typically underrepresented by mainstream publishing. This includes authors across the queer spectrum, writers of color, and folks with intersectional identities. Gay has also stressed, in an interview with the New York Times, that authors without agents can find a home at Roxane Gay Books. 

“There are so many barriers and so many gates,” she told the Times, “Let’s take them down.”

.@emilyoberman & team have designed the brand identity for Roxane Gay Books, @GroveAtlantic’s new publishing imprint for @rgay, the celebrated author, editor & columnist https://t.co/wc8boD7kMY pic.twitter.com/G54dHRFq7D

— Pentagram Design (@pentagram) May 26, 2021

There’s more good news: the imprint has set aside funds for a paid yearlong fellowship for those interested in breaking into the publishing world. 

“She’s really interested in queer voices, she’s really interested in feminist voices, she’s really interested in voices on body size,” Amy Huntley, Gay’s editor at Grove/Atlantic, told the Times, “all kinds of different conversations that are really exciting right now, and I think are the future.”

Submissions will open this summer, and everyone is welcome to apply.