Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

How to Date a Gay Novelist Who Is Older Than Your Dad

First published on VICE.com, June 21, 2014. Read the original here.
When I was 25, I moved to Berlin with a beat-up copy of Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories tucked in my bag. Like many hobosexuals and fagabonds before me, I considered the book a lodestone, a guide to transmuting aimless searching and polymorphous [...]

The Fiction Writer Shirley Jackson Stars in Her Own Novel

First published on The Daily Beast, June 18, 2014. Read the original here.
German seems to have a word for every screwed-up specific emotion. If I were to pick one to describe the strangely compelling, deeply unsettling fiction of Shirley Jackson, it would be unheimlich. Freud coined the term to describe the [...]

‘OITNB’ Transgender Star Laverne Cox’s Unbelievable Year

First published on The Daily Beast, June 6, 2014. Read the original here.
It’s been a whirlwind year for Laverne Cox, the unexpected breakout star of the Netflix smash hit Orange Is the New Black. In case you’ve lived under a rock for the last 11 months, the show follows an ensemble of strong female characters [...]

If you knew you could only read 2,000 more books, where would you begin?

First published in The Guardian, June 1, 2014. Read the original here.
Eight years ago on Christmas morning, my older brother John casually ruined my life.
“Let me ask you something,” he said, gesturing with his coffee mug at the piles of books we’d gotten as presents. “How many books would you say you read a week?”
“One?” [...]

What ‘The Normal Heart’ Means Today

I was interviewed for a US News & World Report article by Tierney Sneed about the new HBO production of The Normal Heart. Read the entire article here.
Tim Miller lived only a few blocks from the The Public Theater in New York City when it debuted “The Normal Heart,” Larry Kramer’s monumental play about the [...]

Exploring M. Lamar’s ‘Negro Gothic Sensibility’

First published on Out.com, May 23, 2014. Read the original with photos and video here.
Before starting a conversation with musician and multimedia artist M. Lamar there are a few things you should read up on: doom metal, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frantz Fanon, Plato, Leontyne Price, bell hooks’ concept of white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, James Brown, James Baldwin, counter tenors, [...]

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