Hugh Ryan is a historian and non-fiction writer focusing on the LGBT history of New York City. He wrote The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison and When Brooklyn Was Queer.
The Women's House of Detention focuses on the queer women and transmasculine people who were systematically imprisoned in the New York City institution.[1] The book won the American Library Association's 2023 Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction[2] and Publishers Weekly called it "a vital contribution to LGBTQ history."[3] Kirkus Reviews called it a "blistering critique of the country’s ‘criminal legal system’.”[4]
When Brooklyn Was Queer focuses on the LGBT history of the borough's waterfront. The book was a 2019 New York Times Editor's Choice[5] and one of Harper's Bazaar's Best LGBTQ books of 2019.[6] It was a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction.[7]