Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman Are ENGAGED! Love Is Indeed Not a Lie!

In June, we told you about the positively swoon-worthy love story of bisexual badass New York Times best-selling writer, professor, and editor Roxane Gay and her girlfriend Debbie Millman, the lesbian writer, curator, artist and beloved podcast host of “Design Matters.”

WELL. We have breaking news! ROXANE GAY AND DEBBIE MILLMAN ARE ENGAYYYGED!

Continuing to prove that the best way to court a writer is by offering up your own poetry, Debbie Millman chronicled their engagement via an Instagram rhyming carousel you may never forget. (You should probably prepare to squeal.)

View this post on Instagram

Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman are engaged. ❤️

A post shared by Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman) on

God must really be a black woman, because last summer I was lucky enough to be in a room of nearly 400 queer humans when Roxane Gay got on stage and dared to hope for another 40 years with the woman she loved. And I have to be honest with you, I haven’t stopped thinking about them since.

The thing about being queer is that we don’t get a lot of grown-up gay love stories. It’s unfair; not only have history books sidelined us — the never ending consequences of those same erasures mean it’s that much harder for us to even dream. I don’t know a lot of “happily ever afters,” but I know that love is hard fucking work. There is nothing easy about being an adult who’s seen the real shit of the world and is somehow still willing to be vulnerable with another person. Waking up every morning and trying again? Those are the building blocks of magic.

From everyone at Autostraddle, our deepest congratulations to Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman.

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen Phillips is Autostraddle's former editor in chief. She began at Autostraddle in 2017 as a freelance team writer and worked her way up through the company, eventually becoming the EIC from 2021-2024. A Black Puerto Rican feminist writer with a PhD in American Studies from New York University, Carmen specializes in writing about Blackness, race, queerness, politics, culture, and the many ways we find community and connection with each other.  During her time at Autostraddle, Carmen focused on pop culture, TV and film reviews, criticism, interviews, and news analysis. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. And there were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. To reach out, you can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram, or her website.

Carmen has written 716 articles for us.

17 Comments

  1. “the never ending consequences of those same erasures mean it’s that much harder for us to even dream.”

    Yeah, to even believe deep down that the love is possible and worth fighting for. This made me wonder, could internalized homophobia make someone give up on a relationship because subconsciously they don’t think it’s even real.

    Sorry, my divorce is still ringing in my ears. Plus I’m on my second serving of hard cider*.

    *Note to self : cider makes you maudlin

  2. Omg I just came here to see if anyone had written about this!

    “I don’t know a lot of ‘happily ever afters,’ but I know that love is hard fucking work. There is nothing easy about being an adult who’s seen the real shit of the world and is somehow still willing to be vulnerable with another person. Waking up every morning and trying again? Those are the building blocks of magic.”

    Gorgeous & lovely writing.

  3. On Twitter I do a small scale “#MorningRomance’ hashtag series that shows depictions of queer romance and love (mostly queer women, because me, mind you), curated from a whole load of places, to do the exact thing you mention Carmen: push back against the overwhelming tide of romance and love depictions in our western societies being cishet, with a post simply showing our love nearly every morning of the week, so we can see everyday romance, weddings, engagements, etc that feature us.

    But yeah, this morning? Without question it was Roxane Gay’s & Debbie Millman’s engaygement, because how could it be anything else?

  4. The thing that blows my mind most about this story is that I found out about the engagement when Lin-Manuel Miranda quote-tweeted the AS tweet about it!!

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