Feminist critic Roxane Gay is to co-write the new Black Panther comics series, saying that “the opportunity to write about black women in a Marvel comic was an opportunity I could not pass up”.

Gay’s first venture into comics, Black Panther: World of Wakanda, will see her working alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates, another newcomer to comics whose Black Panther story debuted in April. Coates’s comic, set in the fictional African nation of Wakanda, following the adventures of the superhero Black Panther, or T’Challa, has gone on to become a bestseller. It sold more than 250,000 copies in the first month after its release in the US, and sold out completely in the UK.

Gay’s story, drawn by Alitha Martinez with covers by Afua Richardson, will follow the lovers Ayo and Aneka, former members of the Black Panther’s female security force, the Dora Milaje. The series expansion will also see the poet Yona Harvey co-writing another story with Coates.

Coates said he had been “shocked by the sheer number of people who picked up” the new Black Panther series, and that Gay was “the perfect person to begin the literary excavations [into the] deep, rich world” of Wakanda.

Gay, author of the essay collection Bad Feminist, the thriller An Untamed State and the forthcoming memoir Hunger, is an associate professor of English at Purdue University. She said in an interview with Marvel that when she was first contacted by Coates about continuing the story, she was “really intimidated, but the opportunity to write about black women in a Marvel comic was an opportunity I could not pass up … This is a departure but it is also still storytelling and I love telling interesting stories.

“It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done, and I mean that in the best possible way,” Gay told the New York Times. But “the opportunity to write black women and queer black women into the Marvel universe – there’s no saying no to that.”

Her story, she promised, would be “pretty intimate. There’s going to be all kinds of action, but I’m also really excited to show Ayo and Aneka’s relationship, build on that love story, and also introduce some other members of the Dora Milaje … I love being able to focus on women who are fierce enough to fight but still tender enough to love.”

The recruitment of Gay is part of Marvel’s drive to diversify its offering, both in terms of creators and characters. “So. I am writing a comic book series for Marvel,” Gay tweeted, announcing the news. “Black women are also doing the covers and art … And no. It doesn’t make sense that I am the first, in 2016. But I won’t be the last.” She also tweeted that it was likely to come out in November.

“In general, people of colour are underrepresented in most storytelling,” she told the New York Times. Coates added: “We have to open the door. It’s not, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there are more women writers, more women creators in comics?’ That would be nice, but in many ways, it is kind of an imperative.”