Roxane Gay's Reading List
Bestselling author of Bad Feminist, Hunger, and Difficult Women. Runs The Audacity newsletter on Substack and The Audacious Book Club.
Open in WellRead Daily app →The Audacious Book Club — Monthly Picks (2024–2026) (2026)
Roxane Gay's monthly book club picks. Picks for Jan–Jul 2024 from her annual selections post; Oct 2024 onwards corroborated by Chicago Public Library's tracked list.
Source: audacity.substack.com
Sohla El-Waylly · 2023 · Buy on Amazon
Kaveh Akbar · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Tommy Orange · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Emily Raboteau · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Rachel Khong · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Victoria Chang · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Aimee Nezhukumatathil · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Gretchen Felker-Martin · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Edwidge Danticat · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Daniel M. Lavery · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Julia Armfield · 2024 · Buy on Amazon
Karissa Chen · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Linda Holmes · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Laila Lalami · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Kevin Nguyen · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Tourmaline · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Rob Franklin · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Parvati Shallow · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Elaine Castillo · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Angela Flournoy · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Julian Brave NoiseCat · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Oyinkan Braithwaite · 2025 · Buy on Amazon
Sara Levine · 2026 · Buy on Amazon
Senaa Ahmad · 2026 · Buy on Amazon
Amber Husain · 2026 · Buy on Amazon
Jamilah LeMieux · 2026 · Buy on Amazon
Adriana E. Ramirez · 2026 · Buy on Amazon
By the Book: Roxane Gay (2017)
NYT By the Book column (2017-01-26).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Ann Patchett · 2016 · Buy on Amazon
""Commonwealth," by Ann Patchett. She is one of my favorite writers, and I loved the ambitious, almost too ambitious, narrative structure of the novel."
Leo Tolstoy · 1877 · Buy on Amazon
"I suppose I've read "Anna Karenina" in the last decade. That was a great book — DRAMA for days."
Edith Wharton · 1920 · Buy on Amazon
"My No. 1 go-to book is "The Age of Innocence," by Edith Wharton."
Kevin Kwan · Buy on Amazon
""China Rich Girlfriend," by Kevin Kwan. Soapy and hilarious."
Yaa Gyasi · Buy on Amazon
""Homegoing," by Yaa Gyasi; and the brutality of what her characters endured made me sob. The history of this world is a bloody wound."
Matthew Desmond · 2016 · Buy on Amazon
""Evicted," by Matthew Desmond. My God, what that book lays bare about American poverty. It is devastating and infuriating and a necessary read."
Richard Russo · Buy on Amazon
"I am a huge fan of Russo — "Straight Man" and "Nobody's Fool" are two of my favorite books"
Richard Russo · Buy on Amazon
"I am a huge fan of Russo — "Straight Man" and "Nobody's Fool" are two of my favorite books"
Favorite books (2022)
Favorite books recommended by Roxane Gay, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/roxane-gay-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
Edith Wharton · Buy on Amazon
"This is such an elegant novel. I love how Wharton finely details the lives of the New York wealthy, their intrigues, the ways they interact, the ways they indulge and deny themselves. And at the heart of it, passionate, unrequited love, and the quieter, more reserved love borne of duty. I’ll always love this book."
Hanya Yanagihara (also rec’d by Gabrielle Union ) · Buy on Amazon
"I don’t mind emotional excess and in addition to being so very readable, with really interesting, complex, at times infuriating characters, “A Little Life” is full of emotional excess. I so admire how Yanagihara allows the melodrama into this story, and does so unabashedly. This book is unforgettable and heart wrenching and all I could ever want in a reading experience."
Dana Johnson · Buy on Amazon
"I first read this short story collection many years ago and it has stayed with me. I was struck by the title, and then the stories, each focused on black girls and women, the worlds of those stories fully realized and held carefully in Johnson’s very talented hands."
Min Jin Lee · 2017 · Buy on Amazon
"Pachinko is the novel I tell anyone who will listen about. It is a multigenerational, sweeping saga of Koreans in Japan. The prose is as edifying as it is absorbing. There are no easy, convenient endings for any of these characters but my goodness, how richly Min Jin Lee renders their lives."
Mary Miller · Buy on Amazon
"Mary Miller is one of my favorite short story writers and in Big World , she writes about flawed, boozy women who make bad decisions and live to tell their tales. The writing in this little collection is atmospheric and claustrophobic and illuminating and lovely. In each story, Miller shows us how the world is as big as it is small."
Alissa Nutting · Buy on Amazon
"There is a scene in Tampa where Celeste marks her territory, if you will, with her own vaginal moisture. That, in many ways, tells you everything you need to know about Tampa and Alissa Nutting’s immense talents. This novel is disturbing, uncomfortable, irreverent, and compelling. Nutting makes us complicit in Celeste’s crimes and still, she leaves room for empathy where most writers would not."
Samantha Irby · Buy on Amazon
"I can’t nor do I want to unsee the essays in this collection. Irby is well known as a humorist, and the essays in “We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” are, indeed, very funny. They are also poignant, and incredibly honest. Humor makes way for vulnerability and by the end of this book you will have cried as much as you laughed about what it means to be a black woman, what it is to live with chronic illness, how poverty marks you, how love always finds a way."
Alice Walker · Buy on Amazon
"While most people tout “The Color Purple,” and rightly so, I love, beyond measure, “Possessing the Secret of Joy,” which is a not quite sequel to “The Color Purple” about Tashi, the wife of Celie’s son Adam, and how something that happens to her body at a very young age shapes the rest of her life. This is the novel that taught me how to write fiction with political ambitions. It is searing and wondrous and painful and every time I read it, the ending wrecks me. And still, I go back for more...."
Marcy Dermansky · Buy on Amazon
"Marie is very very bad which makes her very very interesting and, in fact, endearing. This slender novel is witty and sharp and sexy. It’s a wild ride from New York to Paris to Mexico as Marie tries to find herself, at any cost. Oh what ride it is."