Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

On Richard Halliburton’s The Glorious Adventure

First published in Tin House #45, Fall 2010.
I first came across Richard Halliburton during a layover in Brooklyn on my way from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New Orleans. I was moving because I’d failed to find work as a deckhand in the Caribbean, my goal for the winter. The main problem was I [...]

My Country, My Train, My K-Hole

First published in The Morning News on June 30, 2010. Read the original here.
The train from Chicago to New Orleans passes through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City; names that evoke images of wagon trains and episodes of Dr. Quinn. I don’t know most of this country.
Were I to draw a map, the Northeast would be [...]

Missing the Point

Originally published in The New York Post. 4/2/2009. Read the original (w/ comments) here.
FOR seven years, I read Missed Connections on Craigslist where would-be star-crossed lovers leave messages for those they’d been too shy to talk to. Living in a city as big as New York, I figured love could bump into me at any [...]

By Any Other Name

Originally published on Nerve.com, 4/2/2009. Read the original (w/ comments) here.
Every morning on my way in to work, Diamond passed judgment on me. She was tall and gorgeous, with long black hair, dark skin, and the best back-of-the-truck Louis Vuitton that Chinatown could fashion. Her breasts she’d also gotten on the cheap – hormones from [...]

Linday Lohan’s Fight for Marriage Equality

Originally published in The Advocate, 4/25/2009. Read the original (w/ comments) here.

Lindsay Lohan’s recently released faux eHarmony profile is perhaps the most brilliant 90 seconds in the young actor’s career. She simultaneously manages to poke fun at herself, her relationship with Sam Ronson, and eHarmony — a homophobic dating website that would never allow her to [...]

Up In Smoke

Published in the New York Press, 11/14/2007. Read the original (w/comments) here.
I spent all week anxiously watching the news. On Sunday it was nothing—a blip on my scan of the morning papers. By Monday, the coverage had blown up like the fires themselves, moving fast and seemingly everywhere. I’m not well-versed in California geography, so [...]

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