Gay, Ross

Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights: Essays and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. Gay is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a nonprofit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. In the timely pieces found in Inciting Joy: Essays (Algonquin Books), Gay reflects on the joy we stimulate when we care for each other. In “We Kin,” he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid. In “Share Your Bucket,” he explores skateboarding’s reclamation of public spaces. In “Grief Suite,” he considers the costs of masculinity; and in “Through My Tears I Saw,” he recognizes what was healed while caring for his father as he died. Inciting Joy explores how we can practice acknowledging that connection in caring and also, crucially, how we expand it.