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 [...]

‘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 [...]

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, [...]

A Bathroom of One’s Own

First published in VICE, May 3, 2014. Read the original, with photos, here.
Twenty-five years ago today, transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen died of bladder and lung cancer, which she believed was caused by genetics, not the fuck-ton of hormones that rocketed her to stardom as “America’s first transsexual” in the 1950s. In her honor, I made [...]

This Guy’s SoHo Loft May House The Biggest Collection Of Homoerotic Art In New York

First published on Buzzfeed, March 26, 2014. Read the original, with images, here.
Every time I visit Charles Leslie’s SoHo loft, my eyes have to relearn how to see his apartment, to pick the individual players out of the sexual scrum. Then, like an erotic Magic Eye puzzle, a Warhol suddenly emerges from a thicket of [...]

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