In J.T. Bushnell's Poets & Writers article "The Thousand Pages," he reflects on something Ryan said years ago: that he threw away a thousand pages of his first book, Down in the River, before he was done.
This review appears in Canada's Miramichi Reader. Drew Lavigne is Poet Laureate of Moncton, New Brunswick, and serves on the editorial board at The Fiddlehead.
"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. An excellent and moving collection.
". . . Joanna’s friendship with an Indigenous woman named Lucy sparks rumors about 'perversion' among their town’s religious crowd."
--Kirkus Reviews on Horses All Over Hell, 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.
—Ernest Hilbert, author of Last One Out, book critic for Wall Street Journal. Dust jacket blurb.
“Drinks With” is an interview series started in 2009 by Skip and Timshel Matheny, currently songwriters in the band Roman Candle.
"Paste: I know a lot of details went into the inspiration and writing of this novel—your own history in Eugene at age 16, your friend who actually broke into a mausoleum, your research and reading about manic behavior and it’s connection to art. Can you talk about how some of these things influenced your writing?"
"What makes this novel so warm and heartbreaking despite its gruesome material is that all the characters are driven by their love and concern for each other."
--Fiction Writers Review on Down in the River
“Even as Lyle runs toward trouble and danger, his youthful optimism, however delusory it might be, flickers in these pages, compelling the reader to journey deeper into night, in search of hope and redemption.”
--The Rumpus on Down in the River
“The eleven intricately woven short stories of Horses All Over Hell portray a family caught in an ever-deepening spiral of damage and despair while bound together by ties of love in a Western landscape that comes to life on the page. The deep flaws, the beauty, and the bravery of these richly imagined characters will linger with the reader long after the last page.”
—Mary Clearman Blew, author of Jackalope Dreams and Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin
Biography
Author of Down in the River (2013) and Horses All Over Hell (2019), Ryan has a GED and an Iowa MFA. He mentored writers in PEN America's Justice Writing Program for ten years until 2025. He has taught creative writing at University of Iowa as a graduate student, introduction to literature at Oregon State, and advanced fiction writing for seniors at Boise State. He stood before a judge twice as a young teenager, and worked in Alaska canneries for three seasons as an undergraduate.
Ryan was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee, and led discussions of A Farewell to Arms for NEA's Big Read in Boise. He has received grants from Oregon Regional Arts and the Idaho Humanities Council. His stories appear in Antioch Review, Alaska Quarterly, Crab Orchard, Image, and Quick Fiction. His novel KARMINA was a finalist for the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards.
Since he was nervous in front of large classes, he was surprised to find that he was a popular teacher at OSU. The students, most from Eastern Oregon, were more alert and independent than he'd seen at other colleges.
Inquiries should be sent to colorwheel22 (at) icloud.com, or 458-234-3541.
Check out "Convent Boys" at Crab Orchard Review.
Click: Crab Orchard Review
Milo Essay in the 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
"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."
Polemical Literature Essay
"In the 1990s the exciting ethnic boom in literature began, introducing Americans to talents such as Juno Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Ha Jin. Soon, however, the increasing diversity of voices often seemed less authentic than the crowd that created the buzz. Young writers across America were transforming themselves into sellable models of culture.
"In 2006 Poets and Writers published 'The Pressure to be Exotic,' by Azita Oslanoo, who grew up in Montana and liked it there.
“'As a first-generation American, the daughter of Iranian parents, I’ve been advised by peers, professors, two agents, and one editor to cash in on the latest book in Middle Eastern literature, particularly in memoir-driven literature…The problem is that I can’t in the least imagine the book I’d have to pen…Would it have lots of italicized foreign words interspersed throughout the prose? Would I open with a passage on veiled women and Persian rugs?'”
Quillette Essay
I taught at two colleges back to back, one conservative and one progressive, and found both administrations hit hard against alternative thinkers, as if punitive PC was alive and well on both sides.
"It was as though church moms were everywhere, tidying up, dumping unclean books and magazines, and wiping all the windows that looked onto God’s blue sky."
Albums of Our Lives: Alien Lanes
"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."
Down in the River
first paragraphs
"Levi’s Café stood in a city block of pines—just that one small lighted building in the center of the grove. As Lyle went into the trees, the café windows were yellow stains that in the wind and rain seemed to darken and then flicker on. Instead of going in, he lingered under his umbrella. The motorcycle club gathered here each evening at five. But Lyle had offended one of the boys, Devon, who was tall and drove a Triumph and liked heavy wool sweaters—girls favored him—and he supposed they would not invite him to join now, despite his new clothing.
"In a dim window, familiar boys and girls crowded a booth. Their faces glowed in the light of a short lamppost right outside. Raindrops on the window pocked their skin with tiny shadows, so they all seemed spotted with some attractive disease. Devon and Martin took turns speaking, as if they competed for the girls’ laughter. Devon was skinny in a muscled way, in a too-small T-shirt, his black hair greased like an Italian boy’s, and Martin was chubby and white-haired and balding, hostile and brilliant, old-seeming because he was albino. When Martin spoke, the girls didn’t laugh. He kept a flask-sized bottle hidden under the table, and he sipped from it. The high school had placed Lyle with them because he had taken honors classes back in the mountains, where comprehending Riders of the Purple Sage indicated high promise."
Two of Ryan's Classes
High-Risk Fiction: A Writing Workshop
This class encourages fiction that, like all good writing, takes emotional risks. This riskiness sets literature apart from the dishonesty of bad books, TV, and movies. Workshop is not confession, but in the privacy of their writing rooms students might begin to tell personal stories that perhaps they have only told about other people.
"Tell everything on yourself," Raymond Carver urged. Virginia Woolf would have agreed: "If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people."
We will read published stories as models. Amy Hempel writes of a woman who abandons a close friend dying of cancer, and confronts the aftermath of her choice. Thom Jones explores one soldier’s psychological territory of war, aggression, and epileptic torment, in which “illness” provokes insight and understanding of life.
Hemingway: A Writing Workshop
We will read the short stories of Ernest Hemingway as writers, applying his mastery of craft to our own fiction. Hemingway is still the most influential writer of our time. His literary principles are universal. He was no minimalist, nor a mere innovator of style. Writers around the world claim him as their greatest teacher, including such talents as Albert Camus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Frederick Barthelme, and John Updike.
Creative Writing Tutoring,
Online and Telephone, through Blacketter Services
$40 per hour. Two-hour class, meeting once a week or twice a month.
"Without the Blacketter treatment I never would have gotten into the Iowa Writers' Workshop."
--Jordan Glubka (Eugene, Oregon)
For questions please call 458-234-3541.
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