Gay Ivey is the William E. Moran Distinguished Professor in Literacy at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She has a B.A. in English from the College of William and Mary, an M.Ed. in Reading Education from the McGuffey Reading Center at the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Reading Education from the University of Georgia, where she was privileged to serve as a research assistant at the National Reading Research Center.   Prior to her current position, she was the Tashia F. Morgridge Chair in Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she has also held positions at James Madison University, the University of Maryland at College Park, and the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University.  Gay began her career in education as a reading teacher and reading specialist at Leslie H. Walton Middle School in Albemarle County, Virginia.

Gay’s research centers on what engagement in reading means for the literate, academic, emotional, and relational lives of children and adolescents.  She has published her work in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, The Reading Teacher, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Educational Leadership, and Language Arts. She has twice received the Elva Knight Research Grant from the International Literacy Association (1998, with Karen Broaddus; 2011, with Peter Johnston).

Over the years she has served on the editorial review boards of Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, The Reading Teacher, Voices from the Middle, and Language Arts. She has served as a member of the International Literacy Association’s (formerly IRA) Adolescent Literacy Commission, the ILA’s Literacy Research Panel, and as Chair of the Literacy Research Association’s Research Committee. She is a Past President of the Literacy Research Association.