The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) will host New York Times bestselling author and cultural critic Roxane Gay for “Roxane with one N” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 29. This virtual event, part of the CALS Speaker Series, is free and open to the public. Registration is available at cals.org/speaker-series/

Gay is an author and cultural critic whose writing is unmatched and widely revered. Her work garners international acclaim for its reflective, no-holds-barred exploration of feminism and social criticism. Her collection of essays, Bad Feminist, is considered the quintessential exploration of modern feminism. NPR named it one of the best books of the year and Salon declared the book “trailblazing.” She cohosts Hear to Slay with Tressie McMillan Cottom – a podcast with an intersectional perspective on celebrity, culture, politics, art, life, love and more. She is also a contributing op-ed writer for The New York Times, was the co-editor of PANK, and formerly the non-fiction editor at The Rumpus. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Nation, and many other publications. She was the first black woman to ever write for Marvel, writing a comic series in the Black Panther universe called World of Wakanda.

In their review of Gay’s memoir, The New York Times called Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body “luminous,” and said, “at its most symphonic, it’s an intellectually rigorous and deeply moving exploration of the ways in which trauma, stories, desire, language and metaphor shape our experiences and construct our reality.”

Gay’s appearance honors Betsey Wright. Wright founded and served as executive director of the National Women’s Education Fund, a Washington-based organization that promoted women’s political participation and trained women candidates across the country. She later spent 13 years working for then Governor Bill Clinton as his chief of staff, campaign manager, and deputy chairman of his 1992 campaign for president.