Hugh Ryan

@hughryan

Author & queer historian. MY BAD: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE QUEER 90S AND BEYOND is available for preorders now! Previously: The Women’s House of Detention (2022) and When Brooklyn Was Queer (2019) linktr.ee/HughRyan

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Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Jul 3

I'm bored by the gay not queer discourse, but since it's come up again, I wanted to reshare this. "Queer" is a different kind of label from "gay" or "sodomite," it does different work... slate.com/human-intere...

Almost all of our labels for sexuality or gender identity fall into two camps: words that describe people who take certain actions (sodomite, cross-dresser, etc.), and words that describe people who ascribe to certain identities (lesbian, trans man, etc.). Queer, however, is different. As both an insult and a reclaimed political label, it has always referenced marginalized sexualities and gender identities—the key word here being marginalized. It isn’t about your specific sexual behaviors or identities; rather, it’s about how those things are appraised by the culture around you. This is the essence of queerness: To be queer is to be judged, and to find community with others who have been judged similarly. This is less a matter of radical “inclusivity” and more a kind of qualifying criteria for entry.

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Jun 19

"If Republicans hang on to the House of Representatives in November, they may well have this decision to thank." Mark Joseph Stern link.slate.com/view/67312ad...

SCOTUS often saves the biggest decisions for the very end, but this year they dropped a pretty big one earlier than normal—Louisiana v. Callais. Can you catch people up on why this is such a big deal, and why they likely dropped it early?

In Callais, the Republican-appointed justices gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act, allowing state legislatures to obliterate representation for racial minorities. Then, in a follow-up ruling, the same justices used Callais to dismantle the 14th Amendment’s surviving protections against racial gerrymandering. As a result, several states swiftly redrew their congressional districts to crush the political power of Black and brown communities, exactly as SCOTUS intended.

The decision came down surprisingly early: We would normally expect a ruling of this magnitude to arrive in June, not April. I am convinced Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues rushed out the opinion so states like Louisiana and Alabama would have enough time to eliminate seats held by Black Democrats before the 2026 election. They pretty much gave the game away when, in the weeks after Callais came down, they weaponized the shadow docket to implement the ruling at an unusually rapid clip. If Republicans hang on to the House of Representatives in November, they may well have this decision to thank.

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Jun 5

LA! I'm coming your way next week to talk '90s fashion and nostalgia with the inimitable Michelle Tea at the ASU FIDM museum! Join us asuevents.asu.edu/event/author...

A black invitation flyer with photos of authors Hugh Ryan and Michelle Tea, with a text that reads:

Author Michelle Tea in conversation with Hugh Ryan, in celebration of his new book My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer '90s and Beyond. ASU FIDM Museum June 9, 6:30pm.

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· May 26

New Orleans, for me, is when I started to get my shit together and become an adult - thanks to a “heroic” dose of edibles and a lot of good friends

It was a parade? Or maybe just Tuesday. One of the things I love about New Orleans is how similar those two things are

Looking sexy on a lot of mushrooms with the New Orleans sky line behind me

Me doing acrobatics in a wedding dress on Easter

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· May 19

Here's my tour card, but dates are still being added in July and August! I'm going to drop another thread about what's actually in the book later this week, but here's where you can find me in May and June:

Listing of all of my upcoming events on the book tour for MY BAD!
MY BAD Tour Dates!
5/28 NYC – Launch, The Strand 7pm
6/4 NYC – McNally Jackson Pride in Writing Panel 7pm
6/9 LA – FIDM Museum, 7pm
6/16 DC – Politics & Prose 7pm
6/18 BK – Greenlight Bookstore 7:30pm
6/21 Narrowsburg, NY – Deep Water Lit Fest 2:30pm
6/23 Providence – Riffraff Bookstore 7pm
7/21 NY – Tompkins Square Library 5:30pm
8/4 BK - Perfume at Metropolitan Bar 8pm
8/23 Brattleboro, VT – Retreat Farm 7pm

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· May 18

MY BAD Tour Dates! 5/28 NYC – Launch, The Strand 7pm 6/4 NYC – McNally Jackson Pride in Writing Panel 7pm 6/9 LA – FIDM Museum, 7pm 6/16 DC – Politics & Prose 7pm 6/18 BK – Greenlight Bookstore 7:30pm 6/21 Narrowsburg, NY – Deep Water Lit Fest 2:30pm (continued)

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· May 15

An image of the review of My Bad from the Queer Book Club account, which reads:

My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties — Hugh Ryan
Bold Type Books
Identities: Gay author; broad queer and LGBTQ+ community history; 90s activism, visibility, and backlash

Ryan won the Stonewall Book Award for The Women’s House of Detention and brings the same historian’s discipline to something more personal here. My Bad uses his own experience of coming of age in the 90s as the spine for a broader portrait of what that decade meant for queer life: the visibility that arrived, the backlash that followed, the early internet that changed how queer people found each other. Elliot Page called it a powerful reminder of the enduring importance of preserving queer history. The 90s feel closer than they should right now. Ryan makes clear why that is not a coincidence.

Best for: Readers who want queer history told through personal narrative rather than academic distance. Anyone who came out in the 90s. Anyone who did not and wants to understand what that decade actually felt like.

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 27

AND I'm delighted that I'll be talking with @sabs.bsky.social at the event - Sabs is a brilliant writer and a good friend and our conversation will be amazing! HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES was a book I looked at over and over again for inspiration on how to tell a memoir in essays.

Advertising graphic for the launch of MY BAD: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE QUEER 90S AND BEYOND at The Strand featuring author Hugh Ryan in conversation with author Sabrina Imbler.

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 24

MY BAD is coming in just one month! I love the cover, I love the yellow, and more than anything I love the grainy texture of the cover paper ❤️❤️

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 14

Thanks @outsfl.bsky.social for including MY BAD on your hot 2026 list! And great to see @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social & @hilmalatino.bsky.social on the list too! outsfl.com/books/hot-20...

“In “My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond” (Bold Type, 2026), out in May, queer historian Hugh Ryan takes us from the painful purgatory of 7th grade, where his gender was a Lisa Frank trapper keeper, to his experiences with camp, AOL chat rooms, androgyny, coming of age in the mid-1990s AIDS period, Radical Faeries, Burning Man, sex work, 9/11, thruppledom, and much more, amounting to the author’s “attempt at a balance sheet.””

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 9

The Provincetown Book Festival is where I met so many writers I love and have been blessed to be in community with ever since. Thank you @islemcelroy.bsky.social for this shout out to MY BAD as one of your favorite books of 2026 so far!

Hugh Ryan - My Bad

May 26, 2026

I met Hugh a couple years ago at the Provincetown Book Festival, where I heard him read from The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. I know him mostly as a historian, and I was excited to read My Bad, Ryan’s memoir of queer life in the 90s. I loved being inside this book, and inside Ryan’s early exploration through queerness. He has an eye for historical details, which feel especially relevant in this book, where Ryan deftly draws connections between larger social forces and his personal journey. I normally hate the word journey, but that is what’s happening here. What makes this memoir really stand out is Ryan’s honest assessment of himself. I’m reminded of Melissa Febos, who also lovingly takes a scalpel to her past actions–both Ryan and her write with the rare courage of honesty, highlighting both their accomplishments and the small but significant shames that make up a life. Ryan doesn’t veer away from those moments, and by doing so, he has written a book that feels so smart and embracing. I can’t wait for this to be in the world

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 6

Love to see MY BAD on this E! News Spring Booklist along with the book I am currently reading (and LOVING) - WHIDBEY by T Kira Madden.

The cover of MY BAD with the E! News blurb underneath that reads: "Years after breaking out with When Brooklyn Was Queer, the historian candidly details his own journey as a queer person in the ‘90s and early 2000. Weaving through his own experiences with AOL chatrooms and navigating the nightclub scene as a broke student, Hugh Ryan examines the Queer experience in run up to Y2K and the internet boom. It’s compelling, unfiltered and takes a thoughtful approach to detailing the complicated time in a person’s coming of age."

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 2

This was after my (unfortunately very long) pleather and velvet phase

Two photos from 1997 (?) in one I have shoulder length brown wavy hair and a black pleather jacket, I’m lying on the floor making pouty lips in a hallway. In the other, my hair is clipped back in a sort of fake bob maybe? And I’m wearing a red velvet smoking jacket with lipstick that does not match!

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 2

Looking up photos of me in the 90s to accompany the release of MY BAD and…I’m wearing freedom rings. In a hemp choker. That a friend bought at the lillith fair! Maybe the most 90s photo of me in existence

This is a photo of me in 1999 sitting in front of a boxy computer monitor. I have very long brown hair and most importantly: I’m wearing freedom rings. In a hemp choker. That a friend bought at the lillith fair!

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

And finally, thank you to my good friend @garrardconley.bsky.social, whose memoir BOY ERASED exposed the cruelties of conversion therapy and who - despite the fuckers at the Supreme Court - is still out there fighting the battle for queer kids every single day.

$"Historian Hugh Ryan turns his powerful investigative attention to the queer self as shaped by the Nineties. My Bad is a fearless blend of memoir and history that treats mistakes as evidence: of desire, of survival, of how we got here. I saw my own life refracted through these pages, even as Ryan taught me to understand that history differently. Ryan joins the essential queer tradition of writers who turn memory, sex, and shame into a usable past." – Garrard Conley$

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

Thank you @boomboomhiller.bsky.social for being so weird, so queer, and so himself at all times (if you only know him from SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE you have a delight waiting for you in his memoir ACTRESS OF A CERTAIN AGE)

"Hugh Ryan trains his historical eye on his personal life and reveals not only himself, but the journeys of so many queer Gen-X folks. A fascinating read!" – Jeff Hiller, Emmy Award winner and author of Actress of a Certain Age

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

Thank you @otroedgargomez.bsky.social for the delightful and relentless sense of humor that infuses ALLIGATOR TEARS and HIGH-RISK HOMOSEXUAL and showed me I didn't have to be joyless to be real

"Hugh Ryan’s My Bad is so good, I never wanted it to end. Set against the cultural backdrop of the 90s, Ryan takes us from the AOL chat rooms where queers found each other at the brink of the new millennium, to reckoning with the AIDS crisis as life-saving medications entered the scene, and all the dancefloors, bedrooms, and Greyhounds where he came of age in between. More than just a time capsule, Ryan’s stories are deeply personal and at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. This book is a gift for anyone who grew up feeling lost and hoping that somewhere out there, there were people waiting." – Edgar Gomez

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

Thank you @sabs.bsky.social, whose brilliant and moving book HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES is THE template for anyone who wants to write a memoir-in-essays - and for being a great friend

"MY BAD is a marvel of a book that twines a baby gay’s joyful hedonism with a historian’s breadth of vision. Hugh Ryan investigates the misadventures of his past selves with irresistable candor and enviable wit. It is a treat to follow Ryan as he rides the high highs and the low lows of the 90s and carves out his own, impossibly queer place in the world. And, by god, it’s simply hilarious—one of the memoirs that made me laugh out loud and wonder, did that really happen to him? Of course it did, and the rest is history." – Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

Thank you Elliot Page, for the sheer bravery to be and become yourself despite being in the most public (and often toxic) industry there is

"In My Bad, Hugh Ryan interweaves his knowledge of queer history with deeply personal and engaging storytelling, demonstrating how erasure and cruelty shaped not only the 90s but our collective sense of identity. As the LGBTQ+ community faces renewed threats and censorship spreads, this book is a powerful reminder of the enduring importance of preserving our history and sharing our stories." – Elliot Page, Oscar and Emmy nominated actor and author of Pageboy

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

Thank you @theferocity.bsky.social, a brilliant colleague whose memoir HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES reminded me that writing IS fighting for survival

“'My ghosts aren’t even ghosts; they’re cops, fathers, doctors, monsters and sons' - Hugh Ryan — as a queer historian and storyteller — knows that we’re living in the present our past made possible, for better and worse. If we want a future, Ryan reminds us, we must realize that our ghosts aren’t ghosts; they’re a present that we must confront with what we’ve learned along the way." Saeed Jones, author of Prelude to a Bruise and How We Fight For Our Lives

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

Thank you @michelletea.bsky.social, an author I have loved since I read The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America in - yes - 1998!

How did any of us survive the 90s? In My Bad, Hugh Ryan shows us how he made it out, with writing so intimate and honest and punched-up, reading it is like cutting class with the coolest weirdo in school, becoming instant best friends as your tough complaints give way to tenderness and heart. Deeply inspiring and a joy to read. – Michelle Tea, author of Valencia and The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Apr 1

Thank you @thrasherxy.bsky.social, one of our most stunning and clarion moral thinkers (have you pre-ordered THE OVERSEER CLASS? If not, get on it!)

Reading My Bad was my blessing. With prose as rigorous and inviting as bell hooks’s, Hugh Ryan is our generation’s gay Howard Zinn, a people’s historian of the queer nineties (and beyond). Melding a masterful synthesis of theory with a profound vulnerability, each of Ryan’s essays in this memoir is a gift. My Bad is both a guide for evaluating how we survived our homophobic youths and a map for how we decolonize “the rest of the story.” - Steven W. Thrasher, author of The Viral Underclass and The Overseer Class

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Mar 22

Agosto Machado was a true legend in NYC’s queer scene. Glad I got to talk to him several times for my (ever ongoing) east village protect. Rest in peace friend www.curbed.com/2023/09/drag...

Agosto Machado was working the door at Club SNAFU, a rock-oriented performance club in Chelsea that showed drag occasionally when he heard about a new bar on Avenue A “that was going to have dra-a-a-a-gs,” as he pronounced it. Machado had been “a street queen” since the early 1960s. As a teenage orphan, he got dressed on the steps of a church on Christopher Street before going out, creating looks from a shopping cart full of wigs, makeup, and fabric rescued from the trash of the city’s dying manufacturing sector. Throughout the ’60s, Machado became a staple in the ensembles of theater-makers like Jimmy Camicia and Jack Smith, and he performed in drag with Charles Ludlam. But he had never seen a place where the queens were the featured attraction

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Feb 10

Me shirtless wearing suspenders and a necklace made of plastic skulls on the streets of New Orleans

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Feb 10

Me wearing a wedding dress balanced on a friends feet, cloudy blue sky all around me

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Feb 10

Color photo of me squinting in the sun wearing Mardi Gras beads as a headband and necklace

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Feb 10

Black and white photo of me standing in a striped tank top and rakishly tilted hat over one eye, New Orleans skyline behind me

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Jan 30

The "Greater Than" anti-same-sex-marriage campaigners make a point on their website to say they're not looking to end interracial marriage...but don't mention that they are looking to end divorce, IVF, and surrogacy.

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Jan 10

This is the only opinion the NYT decided to have on ICE's murder of Renee Nicole Good. There's also an article about a new video that shows "the ICE Agent's perspective." You can't even find her name on the homepage.

A screenshot of the New York Times Opinion Page, with the headline "The ICE Shooting Displays the Need for Equilibrium. But How?" by columnist Ross Douthat

Hugh Ryan@hughryan· Jan 8

If you pre-order MY BAD from the @hachettebgusa.bsky.social website, get 20% off with the code MYBAD20. Pre-orders make a huge difference in the life of a book so please feel free to share this with anyone and everyone! www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hugh-...