Author of Down in the River and Horses All Over Hell, Ryan is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He serves as fiction mentor for PEN America's Justice Writing Program. 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, and Image.