Practice

by Ross Gay, Noah Davis

A 45-year-old Black man. A 24-year-old white man. Both writers. One a teacher; the other his student. Before the pandemic separated them, Ross Gay and one of his graduate poetry students, Noah Davis, met regularly to play one-on-one basketball. It was a real hard workout. After each session they were moved to exchange letters about basketball and so much more. Gay and Davis, who both attended college on sports scholarships, have taught and coached basketball, and love the sport—its beauty, its athleticism—see their letters as a way to work through some of the larger issues inherent in sports, from misogyny to race to competition, and as their friendship deepens, basketball becomes a springboard for talking how men relate to each other and to the world. All while never losing sight of how playing games brings them delight, which is, of course, Gay’s signature subject.

208 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication February 2, 2027

About the author

Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.

His honors include being a Cave Canem Workshop fellow and a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Tuition Scholar, and he received a grant from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts.

He is an associate professor of poetry at Indiana University and teaches in Drew University’s low-residency MFA program in poetry. He also serves on the board of the Bloomington Community Orchard.