Hear to Slay
“YOU KNOW, SOME of the biggest mistakes people make is that they don’t read anything,” Roxane Gay (right with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom) tells The Advocate during a break from the 2019 Werk It festival. The two-day women’s podcast festival in Los Angeles featured conversations, workshops, live tapings, networking events, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and the Podcast Accelerator—an opportunity for anyone to pitch a show, incubate a pilot, and score a development deal with WNYC Studios, the festival’s sponsor.
Gay is at Werk that she hosts with Cottom, another prominent Black feminist author. But Gay is speaking about the fat discrimination and body shaming she endured while promoting . The searing autobiography bravely delves into taboo subjects, including Gay’s survival of childhood sexual abuse, her fat body, and the connection between the two.
