Biography
Author of Down in the River, Horses All Over Hell, and the forthcoming The Lord's Hacker, Ryan is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He served as fiction mentor for PEN America's Justice Writing Program for ten years until 2025. He works at Varsity Tutors. He has taught at Oregon State University, Boise State, and Ramapo College. Ryan was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee Writers Conference and a fiction reader at Tin House. His story collection, Horses All Over Hell, was a finalist for the Bakeless and the Hudson prizes. Ryan's books are discussed in Poets & Writers, Kirkus Review, Fiction Writers Review, Paste Magazine, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Canada's Miramichi Reader, and elsewhere. His stories appear in Antioch Review, Alaska Quarterly, Crab Orchard, Image, Other Voices, and Quick Fiction.
New Notice: Ryan's book KARMINA was a 2024 semifinalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards.
Ryan doesn't write "religious fiction," as his Google panel states. He just respects the rural Christian family he writes about in Horses All Over Hell, as he respects his atheist and Jewish characters.
Inquiries should be sent to colorwheel22(at)icloud.com.
On the main Amazon page, only typing Ryan's name and one of his book titles will bring you to his page.
You can also use this link:
Great Review in Canada's Miramichi Reader.
"This book is classic American fiction influenced by Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, and Breece D’J Pancake. Blacketter’s style confidently takes its own place alongside these works; the clear elegant writing, the careful revelation of character, the subtle and moving transformations are the type of experience one can only access in great fiction. This book is certainly that."
Drew Lavigne is "the Poet Laureate of Moncton, New Brunswick, a member of the editorial board at The Fiddlehead, and host of the Attic Owl reading series."
https://miramichireader.ca/2024/09/throwback-horses-all-over-hell-by-ryan-blacketter/
Kirkus Review of Horses All Over Hell
"The author’s prose is as outstanding as the story it conveys, with spare, raw dialogue and deft scene-setting that is descriptive without feeling overwrought."
--from Kirkus Review on Horses All Over Hell, June 15, 2023
The Lord's Hacker
Ryan’s novel The Lord's Hacker is forthcoming from Sunbury Press in 2025.
Here is the first blurb.
“I couldn’t put The Lord's Hacker down. Often it felt like On the Road, capturing swift movement and many characters in the American tapestry. The book is psychologically fraught, understated, and rewarding. By the title, I assumed it was an exposé of a Christian charlatan, but I was delighted to discover it’s about love, life, and hope. The writing is raw and evocative and it inspired me to write.”
--Jose Chaves, author of The Contract of Love
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