Ross Gay
“The delights Gay extols here feel purposeful and imperative as well as contagious in their joy.” The New York Times Book Review
UCSB Reads’ 2025 selection, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, is a New York Times bestselling collection of essays celebrating small, ordinary wonders. Written daily over one tumultuous year, Gay’s humorous, poetic and philosophical essays cover a wide range of topics. From a high five with a stranger to cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, Gay reveals how staking out a space for joy brings us closer together. Gay won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2015, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 2016 and the PEN/Jean Stein Award in 2021.
