Award-winning author and inveterate conversation-starter Roxane Gay has a new book out this week called Difficult Women. The New York Times writes that in these beguiling short stories “sex and violence are…tightly entwined” and that “you really have no idea what’s going to happen next.” The same is true of Gay as a writer, who had been writing and teaching for 18 years when she found herself hailed as “an overnight sensation.”

Recently John Freeman called Gay “the best thing to come out of Nebraska since the 1971 Cornhuskers football team.” Their interview in BOMB is quick, witty, and far-ranging, like listening in on the cocktail banter of the smartest people you know, full of gems like “Escape definitely comes before illumination” and “The older I get the more writing as my whole self becomes a possibility.” Read the whole thing here!

And, as a bonus, you can also read her short story “The Year I Learned Everything” and download the PDF for free here.