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At a moment when the future of health care is in flux in the U.S., do you hope that these narratives will particularly resonate with some folks? One of the things that stood out to me was that the stories are not just about bodies, but also about pain.
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There was nothing that I felt was predominant in any of the essays, more that it was just honest, and sometimes the truths that people shared were painful, but it was important to bear witness to those truths nonetheless. And I was, again, pleasantly surprised by the range of experiences that people shared there was just no repetition of theme because everyone is so different. The emotional experience of it was varied: Mostly I just felt a lot of empathy for different people and their lives and how they live in their bodies. I don’t know that it’s something that I could explain. Was this a punishing experience to read and edit, or were you surprised by a diversity of sentiment that came out of these pieces? People are often hard on their own bodies. And I really appreciate how some of my preconceptions of an athlete with a great body - what it took to develop that great body and the discipline to sustain that - It opened my eyes to different ways of being human that was really interesting and eye-opening and useful. I think that when we look at people, we oftentimes make assumptions and these really challenge a lot of the assumptions that you might make about people. When I look at the work as a whole, it just shows me that everybody has a story and every body has a story. The range of issues from that one prompt, with the way that writers responded, was wonderful, and affirmed that I made very good choices in the writers that I approached.ĭid any particular themes jump out at you, or any insights, from reading the magazine in full?
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They wrote about gender, size, gun violence, wrestling, sex, ability. I was surprised because I expected that I might get a lot of repetition, of, not of style, but people wrote about all kinds of things. In what different ways did your writers interpret that prompt? So I decided to approach 24 writers in all, and I just asked the question, “What does it mean to live in an unruly body?” That was the only prompt or guideline. And so then I thought about what I might want to do, and with Hunger just being out at the time, I thought it would be great to do something about bodies and broaden the conversation that I was contributing to with Hunger about what it means to live in a human body.
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Some time last year, Medium approached me and said, “Would you like to do a pop-up magazine?” It was an unexpected offer but an interesting one, because they were going to be able to give me the resources to pay writers well to act on an editorial vision, which I was really grateful for-they’ve been wonderful to work with. Tell me how this pop-up magazine came about, and what your goals with it were. Last week Pret-a-Reporter spoke with Gay about the inspiration for the magazine, what she learned from it and her critiques about the body-positivity movement. In full, the magazine - which will publish in increments over the course of April and features writers including Carmen Maria Machado, Larissa Pham and Kiese Laymon - offers a kaleidoscope of observations about how outer lives change those within. Seeking to answer the question, “What does it mean to live in an unruly body?” over the course of April, contributors wrote boldly and frankly about domestic abuse, size, gun violence and sex, among other topics. On Tuesday the online publishing platform Medium launched the result of that outreach, a pop-up magazine called Unruly Bodies. And yet, last year, Gay approached 24 other writers to take on a similar challenge.