On the phone, Saeed Jones and I talk about Difficult Women, and the kind of female characters Gay wr

On the phone, Saeed Jones and I talk about Difficult Women, and the kind of female characters Gay writes about. “In almost every story,” he observes, “there’s a silent kind of gazing between women in different contexts.” Sisters, the wives of brothers, a man’s two partners, a fitness instructor and the new woman in class—the list is easy to populate—and “often men don’t know what’s even going on.” He distinguishes this gaze from the way men look at women—with the power of the sun—direct, intense, nonreciprocal. Gay’s women, Jones argues, look back at each other, at us. It’s an exchange. “They’re aware,” he says. “It changes the dynamic.”

I recognize that same quiet, collaborative, destabilizing gaze from the Center for Fiction reading in 2012; from Gay’s work as an editor; from the writing itself. In fiction and in real life, Gay creates spaces for us to look at each other, to create trust, to take risks. “To read Roxane Gay’s work is to be read by Roxane Gay,” Jones says. And what a gift it is.

The Rise of Roxane Gay