Join me at the Grand Central branch of the New York Public Library for a reading from When Brooklyn Was Queer. For information on how to RSVP, click here.

Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. Ryan will discuss in new light the fundamental questions of what history is, who tells it, and how we can only make sense of ourselves through its retelling; and shows how the formation of the Brooklyn we know today is inextricably linked to the stories of the incredible people who created its diverse neighborhoods and cultures.

Hugh Ryan's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Buzzfeed, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Out, and other venues. He earned an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and he received a 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, and a 2018 residency at the Watermill Center.