In case you haven't figured it out already, I am a fan of Roxane Gay. I have already endorsed her first novel, An Untamed State, and her essay collection Bad Feminist, out this week. Both are great, and by all means, buy them and read them.
I would be remiss, however, if I didn't include an endorsement for Roxane Gay's prolific writing on all manner of subjects, all over the Internet, most of it freely available. She is at the very forefront of the literary Internet, and her Twitter feed is a joy to behold. There are a few authors I really truly enjoy following on Twitter because they approach it as just another form of authorship, rather than a stream of self-promotion, and Roxane Gay is certainly one of them. I know a lot of people who don't use Twitter because they aren't really sure how or why they need it, and she's a good example of what you might be missing.
Equally as an enchanting is her Tumblr page, which she updates almost daily. This is the best place to find aggregation of all her Internet writing, including terrific essays written for the likes of The Rumpus and Salon. If you enjoyed Bad Feminist, this is the source material from which it was born, and there is plenty more out there. What I particularly love about her Tumblr though is the deeply personal, almost diary-like writing exercises she posts every week. Lately they've been following a similar structural pattern of Gay's narration and photos of her cooking a recipe (she's a devotee of Ina Garten) while she reflects on her life. The results are equally profound and delicious, and if you're a fan of food writing, you'll love it. It reminds me of Nora Ephron's food writing, but maybe a bit more heartfelt and somber. Really, really lovely stuff.
I often try to carve out a ten minute chunk in every work day to see what she's been writing, and I never find myself skimming her content, which is rare for stuff in my RSS feed. I read and digest every word while I sip my coffee, and then I impatiently wait for her to post again. Every voracious reader understands that anxiety and enthusiasm that comes from waiting for a favorite writer to finish a project so it can be consumed, and with Roxane Gay, you only have a wait a few hours.
Finally, she has a work of non-fiction/fiction/poetry on the Haitian diaspora, Ayiti, I haven't read it yet, but I really can't wait to check it out. For those who enjoyed An Untamed State, it will provide a lot of parsing out of the Haitian-American cultural context of that novel.