{"id":42588,"date":"2016-09-30T11:03:08","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T15:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=42588"},"modified":"2022-09-28T15:02:22","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T19:02:22","slug":"american-west-provides-inspiration-for-wright-state-grads-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2016\/09\/30\/american-west-provides-inspiration-for-wright-state-grads-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"American West provides inspiration for Wright State grad’s novel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Wright<\/a>

Wright State graduate Ryan Ireland’s latest novel, \u201cGhosts of the Desert,\u201d is based on real-life events highlighting Stockholm syndrome, institutionalized power and the fading history of the American West. (Photos by Chris Snyder)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cTo escape his troubled past, Norman heads to the Utah desert to lose himself in work. Having just received a research grant, he plans to study the ghost towns and now-obsolete mines littering the inhospitable landscape. But when he comes across a desert-dwelling group of outcasts and is taken captive by their charismatic yet ever-watchful leader, he is introduced to an alternate way of life that both repulses and attracts him. \u2026 Norman must decide whether to take his chances and run, or yield, and risk becoming one of those around him.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Wright State graduate Ryan Ireland’s latest novel, \u201cGhosts of the Desert,\u201d is based on real-life events highlighting Stockholm syndrome, institutionalized power and the fading history of the American West.<\/p>\n

Ireland grew up traveling out West and continues to have a fascination for it and ghost towns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe West is a place I can keep coming back and come mining for ideas,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have a tendency to store things over in the West that we want to forget about. It\u2019s kind of one of those things when you start looking at history there are things that we keep shoving across the Mississippi River as a way to forget or to marginalize them.\u201d<\/p>\n

America has a way of burying its darkest historical secrets in the graves, ruins, carcasses and layers of rock, quiet witnesses of Western history blown away with time, unnoticed by the rest of us, Ireland said. He finds that the country\u2019s mysterious past in the West seems to intertwine with his life through dramatic experiences.<\/p>\n

\"American<\/a>\u201cI\u2019m fascinated with the way memory operates, and I look at the West as being this place as a slippery place for our cultural memory,\u201d Ireland said. \u201cWe don\u2019t really have history for the West as much as we do in myths and legends. When you go into the West, we have figures like Billy the Kid, more mythical type of characters, depending on the period in history, they change. Calamity Jane changes depending on when she\u2019s written about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland earned his bachelor’s and master\u2019s degrees in English<\/a> at Wright State. He also received his doctorate in English from Miami University. He currently works as a publicity and marketing coordinator at the Xenia Community Library.<\/p>\n

He wrote \u201cGhosts of the Desert<\/a>\u201d while in graduate school at Miami University and wrote his first novel, \u201cBeyond the Horizon<\/a>,\u201d as a student at Wright State.<\/p>\n

Ireland said the West has a pattern of burying American history, including the treatment of Native Americans, Japanese internment camps during World War II and plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like sweeping stuff under the rug. There\u2019s something about our culture that when you look at the desert, when you look at the West we\u2019re predisposed to forget,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I like to weave history and memory into the desert when I write.\u201d<\/p>\n

His older brother had undergone brain surgery at 21 years old. However, a procedure went wrong forever affecting his memory, and to this day, believes he is still 21 years old. Ireland has studied the field of memory after his brother\u2019s tragedy.<\/p>\n

Ireland describes \u201cGhosts of the Desert\u201d as a sympathetic story with no real heroes. The main character, Norman, is a reflection of Ireland\u2019s worldview.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s any part of me in there (the book), it\u2019s all of my worst fears appearing on paper,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Ryan<\/a>

Ryan Ireland is currently writing a memoir about his life during his early 20s when his brother suffered a traumatic brain injury.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ireland finds creative ways to disguise bigger issues such as Stockholm syndrome or institutionalized power.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorman, as we find in his back story, really couldn\u2019t go back to regular society, or what he perceives as regular society, if he wanted to. He eventually develops Stockholm Syndrome, which makes it difficult for him to walk away from the situation,\u201d Ireland said.<\/p>\n

Ireland never thought he would publish his stories, which include dark events, such as in his first book, \u201cBeyond the Horizon.\u201d \u201cGhosts of the Desert\u201d is darker, with perverse and horrendous crimes, which made him think twice about writing it. But with the encouragement of his wife, he realized the actions leading up to the crimes committed in the novel were natural for the characters, despite how dark they may be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was my attitude all the way through writing ‘Beyond the Horizon’ \u2014 \u2018no one is going to read it, it\u2019s never going to get published,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The writing and publication process took a long time for Ireland. It took 10 months between submitting a query letter to signing with an agent, an additional year to find a publisher, followed by another year for publication. His publisher doubted his plot chapter by chapter yet Ireland surprised her each chapter of the way.<\/p>\n

While at Wright State, Ireland said that he learned a lot. \u201cWright State has a solid creative writing program,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said faculty members who helped him improve his writing, included Byron Crews, Scott Geisel, Erin Flanagan and Gary Pacernick, some of whom he stays in contact with.<\/p>\n

Ireland is currently writing a memoir about his life during his early 20s when his brother suffered a traumatic brain injury.<\/p>\n

More information about Ireland, his novels and signing events is available at ryangireland.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wright State graduate Ryan Ireland’s latest novel is based on real-life events highlighting Stockholm syndrome, institutionalized power and the fading history of the American West. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":42591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,733,4299,2037,2060,725,4863,747,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-alumni-profile","category-arts-scene","category-graduate","category-home-news-sidebar","category-humanities-and-cultural-studies","category-liberal-arts","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42588"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42688,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42588\/revisions\/42688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}