Bestselling author Roxane Gay is CCNY's 2025 Langston Hughes medalist

NEW YORK, Jan. 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Roxane Gay, the New York Times bestselling author and noted scholar, is the City College of New York's 2025 Langston Hughes Medal recipient. She'll receive the Medal at CCNY's 46th annual Langston Hughes Festival, Feb. 13-14. This year's event commemorates the centenary of the Harlem Renaissance, that intellectual and cultural revival of African-American literature, music, art, theater and scholarship of which Langston Hughes was a central figure.

The medal is awarded to highly distinguished writers from throughout the African American diaspora. It recognizes honorees for their impressive works of poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography and critical essays that help to celebrate the memory and tradition of Langston Hughes. Past award winners include:

• James Baldwin;
• Gwendolyn Brooks;
• Toni Morrison;
• August Wilson;
• Maya Angelou;
• Octavia Butler;
• Edwidge Danticat;
• Zadie Smith;
• Michael Eric Dyson;
• Rita Dove;
• Jamaica Kincaid;
• Lynn Nottage; and
• Carlson Whitehead. 

A prolific writer, Gay has authored and edited numerous books. The list includes her 2014 debut An Untamed State, the New York Times bestsellers Bad Feminist and Hunger; the nationally bestselling Difficult Women, and the World of Wakanda for Marvel. Click here for a full list of her books.

Gay's writing appears also in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, and Best Sex Writing 2012.  Among the many literary magazines frequently publishing her work are: A Public Space, McSweeney's, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Read more here.

In 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty -- the online news and entertainment publication that covers LGBTQ-related topics, including news and politics -- named Gay among the 50 heroes "leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people." She was also included in the 2022 Fast Company Queer 50 list.

Gay is a graduate of Norwich University (B.A.), the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (M.A.) and Michigan Technological University (Ph.D.).

The Langston Hughes Festival commences Thursday, Feb. 13, with a student symposium. The evening ceremony will include a reading by Gay, and a conversation between her and author Edwidge Danticat, the 2011 Langston Hughes medalist.

Concluding the program on Feb. 14, Valentine's Day, will be the first Langston Hughes Festival Fundraising Breakfast.

"The 2025 Langston Hughes Festival Theme is Black Love, and we will celebrate Black Love in all its iterations," said Jervette R. Ward, Festival Director and Chair of CCNY's Black Studies Department. "In addition, in honor of both Gay and Danticat, this special two-day Harlem Renaissance Centennial will include a celebration of Haitian music and food."

Both Gay and Danticat are of Haitian heritage.

Media Contact:
Syd Steinhardt
[email protected]

SOURCE The City College of New York