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  • Recent Work
    • When Brooklyn Was Queer
    • On the (Queer) Waterfront
  • Women's House of Detention
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Hugh Ryan

  • About
  • Recent Work
  • Queer Brooklyn
    • When Brooklyn Was Queer
    • On the (Queer) Waterfront
  • Women's House of Detention
  • Pop-Up Museum
  • Events

Listen to me on Fresh Air with Terry Gross

August 23, 2022

It’s been a life time goal to be interviewed by Terry Gross, one of the greats of American radio, and a voice I’ve been listening to my entire life. Hear the full conversation!

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LGBTQ people are disproportionately incarcerated. Here’s why.

August 23, 2022

At least 40 percent of people incarcerated in American women’s prisons identify somewhere under the broad lesbian-bisexual-trans-queer umbrella — a shocking statistic that holds true when looking at detention centers for youths as well. Why?

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Rea

September 10, 2021

BOMB Magazine has been a bucket-list, dream publication of mine since I went to grad school. Now, thanks to Mattilda B. Sycamore’s new collection, BETWEEN CERTAIN DEATH AND A POSSIBLE FUTURE, they’ve published my essay “Rea,” about getting tested for HIV in the 1990s!

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In BOMB Magazine Tags LGBTQ, essay, HIV / AIDS
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A Memoir About Queer Identity, Told One Gay Bar at a Time

April 21, 2021

History, as it is taught, is a straight line of dominoes falling — the relentless clack of fact hitting fact, an orderly queue of causality stretching on forever. History, as it is lived, is a reeling spiral of flight and return; the iterative reawakening of new selves in familiar places;

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In New York Times Tags Books, history, LGBTQ
1 Comment

WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER Wins the 2019-2020 NYC Book Award

April 21, 2021

I am delighted to announce that WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER is a winner of the 2019-2020 New York City Book Awards, given out by the New York Society Library.

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In Awards Tags brooklyn, LGBTQ, Prize, history
1 Comment

Hugh Ryan & Avram Finkelstein Win the 2019 Allan Berube Prize

January 20, 2020

On the (Queer) Waterfront, the first comprehensive historical exhibition on LGBTQ life in Brooklyn, elegantly recasts the history of New York’s most populous borough as a site of long-standing and diverse LGBTQ communities. Meticulously researched and sophisticated in its approach to how gender and sexuality have changed over time as well as why they matter to urban history, it serves as a model for LGBTQ public history in the twenty-first century.

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In Awards Tags LGBTQ, history, Prize
1 Comment

Downton Abbey's Thomas Barrow and the Future of the Gay Past

September 16, 2019

The question for queer Downton Abbey fans, then, is this: Is Thomas an accurate unveiling of historical homosexuality, hidden but fully formed, just waiting for us to notice his existence? Or is he a backward projection of our current idea of what it means to be gay, an anachronism disguised as a revelation?

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In Town & Country Tags LGBTQ, history, Television
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History Keeps Me Awake Some Night - David Wojnarowicz

Never Not a Poet

July 22, 2019

To those who argue that Wojnarowicz wasn’t a poet, I say this: his work is saturated with poetry, and poetry seeps upward through his life, like a water table importunate with spring.

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In Poetry Foundation Tags LGBTQ, arts & culture, Books, history, HIV / AIDS, writing
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Publications

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Tweets

  • Hugh Ryan
    <3 https://t.co/LozoM3Ronh
    Dec 14, 2020, 1:24 PM
  • Hugh Ryan
    RT @strandbookstore: 📗 #staffpick #strandpick https://t.co/SizVUixhAz
    Dec 14, 2020, 11:05 AM

For lectures, readings, and appearances, please contact Leslie Shipman at The Shipman Agency: leslie@theshipmanagency.com.

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Copyright 2020 Hugh Ryan. All Rights Reserved.