Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

The Power of Queer Books

First published on The Daily Beast, August 1, 2014. Read the original, with photos, here. Written with Sassafras Lowrey.
SASSAFRAS LOWREY: When I was seventeen, the adults I lived with went through my bedroom and found the lesbian books I’d secretly checked out from my county library. I kept them stacked between my high [...]

“Where Were You During the Christopher Street Riots?”

First published on The New York Public Library LGBT @ NYPL Blog, June 27, 2014. Read the original here.

The document above was handed out by members of The Mattachine Society, one of the earliest and longest-running homophile organizations in America, in the days following what would eventually become known as the Stonewall [...]

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 [...]

The Leslie-Lohman Museum Is a Haven for Artists Who Are Too Gay for Art School

First published on Vice.com, March 2, 2014. Read the original, with images, here.
As we unwind the bright red packing tape that joins the two coffee cans together, Hunter O’Hanian, the director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, explains what I’m about to see.
“We think this is his only finished work,” he says, [...]

Being a Queer Writer: Talking With Hugh Ryan

I was interviewed on October 22nd, 2013 by Edge, about being a queer writer. Read the original (with photos) here.
Nearly a decade ago, Hugh Ryan needed to make a career choice between artist or writer. Wisely he chose writing. Since then he’s become one of the most published LGBT (or ’queer,’ as he [...]

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