Star asked Roxane Gay:

I hunger for Hunger but was thrilled to hear about Difficult Women. You seem able to skillfully toggle between fiction and nonfiction. Short story and essay. When you sit down to write do you know which it is you will be writing before you get words on the page? How do you approach them differently?

Roxane Gay Hunger is coming soon. Hang tight! When I sit down to write I generally do know if it's going to be fiction or nonfiction but my process is fairly similar--I do a lot of writing and drafting in my head. I'm often thinking through a complex question and the writing is my way of trying to answer that question. The difference in my approach is that in my nonfiction, I want to be persuasive and clear on where I stand but I also want to respect other points of view even as I explain why I disagree with them.

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