Event Description

Head on over to the William Way Community Center on April 5th @ 8pm for a reading and signing with author Hugh Ryan about his book When Brooklyn Was Queer.

About the Book
Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story. Not only has Brooklyn always lived in the shadow of queer Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Harlem, but there has also been a systematic erasure of its queer history―a great forgetting.

Ryan is here to unearth that history for the first time. In intimate, evocative, moving prose he discusses in new light the fundamental questions of what history is, who tells it, and how we can only make sense of ourselves through its retelling; and shows how the formation of the Brooklyn we know today is inextricably linked to the stories of the incredible people who created its diverse neighborhoods and cultures. Through them, When Brooklyn Was Queer brings Brooklyn’s queer past to life, and claims its place as a modern classic.

About the Author
Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator, whose LGBTQ history of Brooklyn, When Brooklyn Was Queer, will be published in March of 2019 by St. Martin’s Press. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Buzzfeed, the LA Review of Books, Out, and many other venues. He has an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars, and is the recipient of the 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, and a 2018 residency at The Watermill Center. He is the Founder of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and he sits on the Board of Advisors for QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, and for the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art. @Hugh_Ryan

Get your copy now:

When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History