The Audacity.

The Audacity.

Acquired Tastes: A Call for Submissions

For younger writers, ages 15-21

Roxane Gay's avatar
Roxane Gay
Nov 19, 2025
∙ Paid

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 do…

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