Great Review of Ryan's Story Collection 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
“Horses All Over Hell is a heartbreaking new book from a master of modern American fiction.”
—Ernest Hilbert, author of Last One Out, book critic for Wall Street Journal. Dust jacket blurb.
"Blacketter's prose is paired with the torque of a plot that lives and moves like an indomitable engine. This difficult and necessary story is inbreathed with a ferocity that leaves the reader shaken."
--Shann Ray, author of Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity
Sign up to read Poets & Writers for free:
https://www.pw.org/content/the_thousand_pages_tips_for_transitioning_to_the_novel
Milo essay in the NY Observer
“I support anyone's right to speak and publish. But my own feeling is that Milo was often thin stuff—he was one-dimensional, neglecting to locate any other personality trait that might mitigate his constant judgments about people on the left . . . His rhetoric was absent goodwill that might truly persuade, and therefore he lacked complexity and depth on the stage. In short, too much stupidity issued from his pretty mouth.”
Hemingway Essay in The NY Observer
"Though I have my own reservations about the macho, photo-op persona he embraced in middle-age—machine gunning sharks, swilling from a bottle, grinning next to a conquered marlin or lion—the younger Hemingway, in his early twenties, had a kid-like vitality and art-loving exuberance that were enormously appealing."
"I discovered Guided by Voices fifteen years ago, while miserably married and fully employed, teaching ESL in Atlanta. In those days, I was earning money for curtains, towels, and bedspreads. Instead of working full-time as a writer slash part-time anything, I woke at 3:30 a.m. to write before work. After my job I went to my counseling appointment—for my attitude and my drinking."
Biography
Author of Down in the River and Horses All Over Hell, Ryan is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He mentored incarcerated writers in PEN America's Justice Writing Program for ten years until 2025. 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, the Hudson, and the Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction. His 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. His essays and reviews are found in The Rumpus, the Observer, and Atticus Review. He has received grants from Oregon Regional Arts and the Idaho Humanities Council. 
New Notice: Ryan's book KARMINA was a 2024 semifinalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards.
Inquiries should be sent to colorwheel22(at)icloud.com.
I have a new Author Central page. On the main Amazon page, only typing my name and one of my book titles will bring you to my page.
You can also use this link:
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