WE ARE CLOSED TO EMERGING WRITER ESSAYS AND UNAGENTED BOOK SUBMISSIONS UNTIL JANUARY 1, 2026. TRYING TO SUBMIT THESE PROJECTS UNDER A DIFFERENT CATEGORY WILL NOT CHANGE THIS REALITY. WE APPRECIATE YOU AND LOOK FORWARD TO READING YOUR WORK IN THE NEW YEAR!
THE AUDACITY, my newsletter, features an emerging writer twice a month. I define emerging writer as someone with fewer than three article/essay/short story publications and no published books or book contracts.
Please submit your best nonfiction and nonfiction only. I am interested in literary essays and memoir. Please submit only one essay at a time. Essays should be between 1500 and 3000 words. We may take up to eight weeks to respond but we will respond to all submissions.
All essays are paid a flat fee of $1,500.
Submissions will only be accepted at https://gay.submittable.com/.
I am interested in thoughtful essays, beautiful, intelligent writing, deep explorations, timelessness, and challenging conventional thinking without being cheap and lazy. I am interested in provocative work but we are not interested in senseless provocation. You don't have to cannibalize yourself to tell a compelling story. The essays in Unruly Bodies or that I have preciously published in The Audacity might give you a sense of what I like but I am always open to being surprised. I am not looking to publish anew what I've already published.
Again, I am only interested in nonfiction, which is to say no poetry, fiction, or anything else that is not nonfiction. I cannot stress this enough. I am only interested in nonfiction for the Emerging Writer Series.
ROXANE GAY BOOKS ACCEPTS submissions from both agented and unagented writers. This imprint publishes three (3) books a year, so when submissions are closed to unagented writers, it is because my slate is currently full.
Please, please read these guidelines and follow them.
AGENTS: If you have already submitted a manuscript to other editors at Grove, please query first before submitting to Roxane Gay Books.
I am going to publish books I love from interesting writers. That could, of course, mean anything. I am looking for beautifully written, compelling books that challenge, delight, and entertain readers. I love literary fiction but your story has to have an interesting plot. Things have to happen. I want books I simply cannot put down and that, when I finish, I can’t stop thinking about. I love stories about difficult women. I welcome your so-called unlikable protagonists. I enjoy dark, gritty stories but I am also open to happy, joyful but unsentimental stories that reflect faith in the overall goodness of humanity.
I will consider novels, short fiction, memoirs, essay collections, and nonfiction. Most genres are welcome but my tastes skew to not only literary fiction but contemporary romance, and science fiction and fantasy. I am always open to being surprised but I will not likely be drawn to stories about sad white people marriages or autofiction. I am not interested in police propaganda narratives. Historical fiction, Westerns and the like will be a hard sell and there are other imprints that are a better fit for those stories. I am not currently seeking YA, middle-grade, or children's books. Only non-fiction will be considered on proposal.
Poetry is a vital art form we love, but we are not considering any poetry, without exception.
Roxane Gay Books prioritizes underrepresented writers and does so, proudly. Reparations, if you will.
I hope to develop deep relationships with writers and help them navigate the process of bringing a book into the world from manuscript acceptance through and beyond publication. I am interested in working with writers who understand that publishing is a business and are willing to approach it as such. The writers who will be best suited to this imprint will want to actively promote their book and will do so without apologizing or diminishing their work as if it doesn’t matter. They will be confident in their writing or, like many of us, (ME) able to project confidence while dealing with overwhelming self-doubt.
There are no fees for submitting a manuscript. I will respond to every submission though I cannot respond to every submission personally. I will respect your work and the time you have put in to get to this point. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a large social media following or a platform. You do not need blurbs from writers for your manuscript or proposal because it is ridiculous that the market would ever expect that for an unsold project. It is an unnecessary hoop and there’s no need to jump through it for me. You don’t need to hire an editor to edit your manuscript before you submit though you do, of course, want to send your best, polished work.
All I really care about is what you put on the page.
Submissions will only be considered via Submittable. I will not consider e-mail submissions. I do not ever do business in DMs. I hope to respond within three months but may take up to six months.
In 2014, I published an essay, “Not Here to Make Friends” where I wrote about the importance and delight of unlikeable female protagonists. Likeability, I said, was a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be, a trap, constraining women to very narrow ideas about how they should be. In fiction, characters who don't follow this code are labeled as unlikable, as problems, as less worthy of taking up space on the page. I wrote the essay because of my own conflicted experiences with likability but also because I have spent a lot of time over the years thinking about unlikeable characters and how unfairly they are maligned.
As I also noted in my essay, unlikable are characters I’m frequently drawn to. I want interesting characters to do bad things and get away with their misdeeds. I want characters to think ugly thoughts and make messy decisions. I want characters to make mistakes and put themselves first without apologizing for it. I want authenticity and to read stories about real people who aren’t always picture perfect.
Because I remain fascinated by unlikable characters, I’m putting together Acquired Tastes, an anthology celebrating unlikeable characters: how we create them, how we understand them, how we love them and how they enrage us, and why they are so necessary to our stories.
This call is for young adult writers, whose work I’d like to include in this anthology alongside some more familiar names.
I’m looking for short fiction or essays, from young adults, ages 15-21. Submission guidelines are below. Please share widely with the younger writers you know who might be a good fit for this. Contributors will receive a payment of $1,000 upon publication in 2027 and a copy of the anthology.
The administrative details:
- Please submit via Submittable using the Acquired Tastes submissions option.
- Only fiction and nonfiction will be considered.
- An individual may only submit one submission, only as a Microsoft Word file.
- Submissions should not exceed 5,000 words.
- Please include a brief (50-100 word) bio in your cover letter. If you don’t have a bio, that’s okay, too. Your writing will speak for you.
- All submissions must be received by 11:59pm (PST) on February 2nd, 2026.
Please submit a cover letter and full-length manuscript as a PDF.
AGENTS: If you have already submitted a manuscript to other editors at Grove, please query first before submitting to Roxane Gay Books.