SO FAR:

J. Ryan Stradal lives and works in Los Angeles County, California.

His latest novel, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, published by Viking / Pamela Dorman Books in April 2023, is an instant national bestseller. It debuted at #11 on the national ABA Indiebound list, #7 on the Los Angeles Times list, and was the #1 selling hardcover fiction book among independent bookstores in the Midwest its first week of release. Roxane Gay has called it “a perfect book,” and it received glowing reviews from NPR, People, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota Public Radio, TASTE Magazine, AARP Magazine, and Kirkus, where it earned a starred review. In September 2023, it was named a finalist for the Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction, and the German language rights were sold to Diogenes.

His second novel, The Lager Queen of Minnesota, was published by Viking / Pamela Dorman Books in July 2019. Receiving starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and BookPage, it became a national bestseller its first week of release, and was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, USA Today, Booklist, Paste, and the Texas Library Association, among other places. In 2019, he did a sixty-one-stop book tour that took him to bookstores, libraries, and breweries in fifteen states between July and December. In 2020, The Lager Queen of Minnesota was named the winner of the WILLA Literary Award (by Women Writing the West, to honor the best in literature, featuring women’s or girls’ stories set in the West that are published each year) and was a finalist for the Heartland Booksellers Award.

His first novel,  Kitchens of the Great Midwest,  was  published by Viking / Pamela Dorman Books  on July 28th, 2015, and   reached   the  New York Times    Hardcover Best Seller list at #19 on its  third week of release.  In April 2016, the American Booksellers  Association voted    Kitchens  the Indies  Choice   Book  of   the Year Award – Adult   Debut   Winner. In July 2016,   the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association  awarded  it the  2016 Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for  the year's top fiction book, and in October 2016, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association also named   Kitchens the year's top novel.

So far,  Kitchens  has been acquired for publication overseas in twelve  countries (Brazil, Finland, France,  Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Korea,  Poland,  Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).    Back   in November 2014, before it was published,   the  Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society  awarded  Kitchens of the Great Midwest   first prize in their annual novel competition. He's extremely grateful for the  places that put it on their 2015   best-of lists.  

As of February 2024, he is currently the Writer in Residence on The Book Case, a weekly literary podcast hosted by Kate Gibson and Charles Gibson. The Book Case is a production of ABC Studios and is affiliated with Good Morning America, where he appeared on a live segment with Kate and Charlie launching this series. Listen to episodes of The Book Case here at ABC Audio or Apple Podcasts.

J. Ryan’s shorter  writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books,  BuzzFeed, Literary Hub, VanityFair.com, The Rumpus, Granta, Boulevard, CNET, Joyland, The Week, Midnight Breakfast, Los Angeles Magazine, McSweeney's Internet Tendency,  Electric Literature, Shepherd, Midwestern Gothic, The Towner, The Rattling Wall,  The Nervous Breakdown, Bright Wall / Dark Room, Goodreads, Monkeybicycle, The California Prose Directory (2013), American Short Fiction (online), Knee-Jerk Magazine, Insomniac,  Longitude, Trop,  Cedars, Facsimile, Marguerite Avenue, Hobart, This Recording,  NFL.com, and in McSweeney's “The Goods”. He also contributed field reports for the serialized iPad/iPod novel “The Silent History."

A selection of his short stories, compiled under the title  "Nerd & Whore are Friends,"  was a 2013 finalist in the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. His short fiction  has  also been anthologized    and  named a finalist for the James Kirkwood Literary Prize.

 In addition to trying to write short stories and novels, he was a contributing editor at TASTE from 2017 to 2019.  Previously, he    was the  fiction editor at  The Nervous Breakdown   from 2013 to 2016, and  an  editor-at-large at Unnamed Press in Los Angeles from 2015 to 2017.    He was  also co-editor, with Adam Cushman, of  Critically Acclaimed, a compendium of "real reviews of fake movies," published by Rare Bird in January 2018, and editor of the 2014  California Prose Directory, an anthology of writing about California by California writers, published by Outpost19.

He volunteers for & is on the advisory board of the educational non-profit 826LA. He's also helped create   products and materials for  their affiliated store, the  Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

He co-produces, with Summer Block, the literary/culinary series “HOT DISH," which has featured  Shauna Barbosa, Sara Benincasa,   Cecil Castellucci, Steph Cha, Jade Chang, Carina Chocano,  George Ducker, Lauren Eggert-Crowe, Gina Frangello, Ann Friedman, Rico Gagliano, Jim Gavin, Amelia Gray, James Hannaham, Heather Havrilesky,  Meg Howrey, Peter Hsu, Julia Ingalls, Kima Jones,  Taleen Kali, Brad Listi,  Ben Loory, Lou Mathews, Tracy McMillan, Mary Otis, Lilliam Rivera, Davy Rothbart,  Jen Sincero, Stacey Vanek Smith, Ramesh Srinivasan, Jerry Stahl, Chris Terry, Diana Wagman, and Alissa Walker, among many others.

He has often worked in television, story editing or producing shows for VH-1, MTV News (r.i.p.), ABC, FOX, TLC, A&E, Discovery, and History. Working primarily for Original Productions from 2008 to 2014, he  was  the senior story producer on “Deadliest Catch” and “Ice Road Truckers” and a supervising producer on “IRT: Deadliest Roads,” "Storage Wars," and “Storage Wars: Texas.” 

He was also associate producer on Chad Hartigan's film “This Is Martin Bonner,” which won the Audience Award for Best Of NEXT at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013.

He grew up in the Midwest, in the   southern Minnesota town of Hastings, where he often failed his driver's license exams,   and graduated from Northwestern University, where he often slipped on the ice. He does not own a gun and a motorcycle, which makes him unique among the men in his extended family.

He likes books, wine, sports, root beer, craft beer, and peas.

Have recommendations? Free food? Compliments?  Contact J. Ryan   at kitchens.midwest@gmail.com