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- [00:01]
NPR Announcer
This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive.
- [00:05]
Kennedy Ryan
For more.
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Capella University's Flexpath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.
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Kennedy Ryan
Edu.
- [00:15]
Tonya Mosley
This is FRESH air. I'm Tonya Moseley. Say the words romance novel and watch what happens. Some people light up, others roll their eyes. Almost nobody is neutral. It's the best selling fiction in the world, outselling mysteries and thrillers, and yet it's still the genre people feel they have to defend or apologize for. I've always wanted to know what makes a writer choose a genre that has historically been shunned by critics in mainstream publishing. My guest today, Kennedy Ryan, is one of those writers, and in some ways her path is typical of the field. For one, Kennedy Ryan isn't her real name. Many romance writers use pen names. She didn't get her first publishing deal until 40, which is also common. 45 is the average age of the genre's most successful writers. Kennedy Ryan's love for romance began in middle school when she'd sneak the books past her mom, who was a preacher. She came back to it after building a career in journalism and autism advocacy. Her characters are the people romance often leaves at the margins, black and indigenous queer women, people living with disabilities, navigating ambition, caregiving and grief. Ryan builds them the way she once built news stories, by going out and interviewing real people first. Ryan is the first black writer to win romance's highest honor, the Romance Writers of America Award, known as the Rita. Her bestselling novel before I Let Go is being adapted for Peacock. And her latest book, Score follows two former college sweethearts reunite it while making a film about the Harlem Renaissance. Kennedy Ryan, welcome to FRESH air.
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Kennedy Ryan
Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.
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Tonya Mosley
The paradox is really interesting to me because millions of people read fiction, but people are so drawn to romance. Romance outsells every other kind of fiction, but critics have been kind of condescending about it for hundreds of years to you looked at romance and decided this is where you wanna go this, you wanna go all in. What was it about romance for you?
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Kennedy Ryan
Yeah, I think like you said, I was young when I first discovered romance. I think it was one of my first introductions to seeing what relationships looked like besides obviously the one that was in my house, which was very healthy, fortunately, with my mom and my dad. But I liked, I think, the escape of it, too. I mean, I was only in the eighth grade, but I liked being trans. It Kind of to another world. And there was a glamour to it, especially then. So this is like the heyday of the bodice rippers and harlequin presents. And so it was usually very glamorous kind of setting. And I was living in rural North Carolina with, like, deer on my front porch, you know, so the glamour of it, I think, really drew me. And just this idea that you could be in another world and also that just kind of seeing women especially loved, you know, loved and esteemed and at the center of something. I was a voracious reader, so I was reading a lot of things, but romance quickly became my favorite. And so. And, you know, I left it a little bit after high school, but in my 30s, I came back because it was. It was. It was an escape. And I think it was a reflection of a lot of hopes and dreams and desires and needs. And I think that's what draws a lot of people to it.
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Tonya Mosley
You know, every romance novel, more or less, kind of has the same bones. It's like two people who have this intense attraction to each other, and then something is keeping them apart. And then in the end, there's always a happy ending. Love wins in the end. And millions of writers have kind of worked inside of the same structure. What do you think makes you different?
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Kennedy Ryan
Oh, I don't. I think that each author. I don't think that I'm exceptional. You know what I mean? I think that each author has to figure out kind of their why. And what I mean by that is, why are you writing? I think, for me, I am interested in discourse. You know, it is the, you know, guy meets girl, or girl meets girl, or guy meets guy. But it is these two people who. Something is drawing them together. But then there's some conflict or there's some issue that's keeping them apart. And for me, I am interested in the dynamic, but I'm also interested in them as individuals in a very deep way. And I think one thing about the way I approach romance is that I approach it from what is the conversation I want to have? Whether it's I want to talk about black women's mental health, or I want to talk about neurodivergence, or I want to talk about domestic violence, or I want to talk about missing and murdered indigenous women. I start with what is the conversation I want to have, and then I build the characters who I feel are best kind of equipped to carry that conversation. I refer to my romance, the way I write it as Trojan Horse. You know, I'm smuggling in discourse I'm smuggling in the conversation I want to have in what to me is the most accessible genre in publishing. And so there might be something, some conversation. Maybe you're not typically talking about black women's mental health or depression and how we don't need to suffer in silence. Maybe that's not something you're sitting around thinking about, but all of a sudden you're reading a romance novel and that's the conversation that's at the center, and it's making you think about it. And that is what's most interesting to me about romance. You know, for me, it is this vehicle for me to have discourse.
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Tonya Mosley
You know, these stories are so rich, you really could write them without the sex, and they still stand. So what does that sensuality and sex do?
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Kennedy Ryan
What would be lost without, you know, I don't know that a lot would be lost. I think that what is gained is that a lot of times culture makes women feel ashamed for our desires. We've been made to feel like we don't have a right to pleasure and made to feel that our pleasure shouldn't be at the center. And in a lot of situations, it's fine for men to have pleasure. It's fine for men to pursue these things. But when women do, it's like it's a dirty secret. It's, you know, it's something that we're embarrassed about, or it's something that we hide, or it's something that we shame. And you do have what is called closed door romance, meaning you, you know, there's a. Romance is such a wide spectrum. So there are some romance novels that have what's called open door. So, you know, it is much more detailed kind of sex scenes. The physical aspect of the relationship is more detailed. And then you have fade to black or closed door romance, where it's just kind of alluded to. And then you might have romance. Like there's a whole genre that's inspirational or Christ. And you may have like no sex on the page at all. So romance is just this. It's a huge spectrum of, you know, how physical intimacy is depicted. And I think it can. None of it is wrong. You know, I think it's what. What people are looking for. But for me, I think there's a power in embracing your own pleasure and in taking command of it and in owning it and not being ashamed of it. And I think that's a reclamation that a lot of women appreciate when we are made to feel ashamed for. It's a function of patriarchy and Misogyny. And I think that the dismissiveness and the condescension that a lot of broader culture has toward romance novels is rooted in patriarchy. This is the only genre. Women are absolutely at the center. We are mostly writing it. We are the ones who are running it, we are the ones who are making money from it. And anytime women are benefiting at every level that way, patriarchy comes into play.
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Tonya Mosley
Well, this is a thing that I was so fascinated by in researching, because I didn't know any of this, but I came to understand that this is a genre that is written largely by women, for women.
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Kennedy Ryan
Absolutely.
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Tonya Mosley
Many of the women are hitting their creative peak in midlife, but the average successful writer is middle aged, and yet it's treated as unserious. I was wondering, what have you learned women actually want from a love story that maybe they can't say out loud anywhere else? Especially now that you've written so many of these novels and you've received feedback from the women who read them.
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Kennedy Ryan
Yeah, I mean, people sometimes fixate on the physical aspect of a lot of these romance novels and they're like, oh, it's, you know, women reading, you know, sneaking off, reading these novels. And yeah, that's what they, that's how they think of it. And they say it in a really despicable sometimes. But honestly, I think that it's more layered than that. And that's not every person. Like, there are some people who will read books, they may want to read erotica, which is different than contemporary romance or romance erotica is a different category because erotica.
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Tonya Mosley
Yeah, I don't want you to have to do definitions. But for the layman who doesn't know what is the difference between erotica and the romance that you.
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Kennedy Ryan
Right. So erotica is basically the point of that story, is the sex. You know, and when you're talking about a romance novel, like what I would write, which is more like contemporary romance, there is a story, there's a plot, There is, you know, you're building out these characters and there's a world. Not that you don't have that with erotica, but the sex is the point. Like, the sex is much more prevalent. It's dialed up and you might get a little plot, you might get a little character development, but for the most part, the sex is, is the point. And in a romance novel, you definitely can have like varying levels of intimacy, physical intimacy that's on page or off page, behind closed doors, open doors, but you are definitely gonna build out a world and characters and Plot and story, like, all of that has to be present or it should be present. So I think that. And people who. I do not shame people who want to read just for the sake of the spice. Like, I think that, that if that's what you want, like, I don't have disdain for people who are just like, I just want to read for this mutt girl, go for it. You know, that's a completely valid thing. But I think that most of the time when I am talking to women, when they're reading my books, they like that women are respected. They like that they are with a partner they can trust. They like the fact that their dreams and their ambitions and their goals and I'm talking specifically about the books that I wr. Um, that their dreams, their goals, their ambitions are respected. I always say all of my heroes are feminist, you know, and a lot of people have said to me, well, aren't you concerned that you are giving women unrealistic expectations? And don't you want to reflect the reality of. No, not really. Like, I am. I am interested. And I'm not saying that I'm writing some fantasy because I think my books are very much grounded in real life and in real issues. These are women who are navigating chronic illness, like lupus. And you know, who. I've written, like, different limbed, you know, women who, you know, have. Who are amputees. Like, I am interested in. Yes, I think it is unique in some ways, but I think what I am doing specifically is I am writing from the margins to the center. I grew up, you know, we talked about me reading romance novels when I was much younger, Let me tell you, in the 90s, in the 80s and the 90s, even in the early 2000s, you were not seeing a lot of diversity on the shelves. You know, with romance novels, every heroine I was reading about was white and thin and blonde and blue eyed or, you know, a quote unquote brunette.
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Tonya Mosley
You mentioned these Harlequin novels that you would read. What were the, what were the types of books that you were reading? Yeah, I mean, they were seeing them in your room.
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Kennedy Ryan
Yeah, they were category romance, which, you know, that's Harlequin Presents Harlequin Romance. It's very much like a formula usually, but it's a quick read. It's, you know, girl meets boy and the plot will vary. You know, like with any other. If with any other genre, the plot can vary, but you're still gonna have a happily ever after. But these books were. I mean, mostly there wasn't very Much diversity. You didn't see a lot of queerness. You didn't see ethnic diversity. You didn't see disability. You didn't see any of those things. It was these perfectly able bodied white women who were. Who were thin.
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Tonya Mosley
Your latest novel, Score. It follows two former college sweethearts who broke up badly a decade before, and they're kind of thrown back together making a film about the Harlem Renaissance. And Verity is the main woman character, and she's a screenwriter. She also has bipolar disorder. And I don't think I've ever read a book about love and desire from the point of view of a person with a mental illness. How did you come to decide to give your character this type of backstory?
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Kennedy Ryan
I am interested in writing the stories of people who don't typically see themselves at the center of cultural narrative. And you know what I mean by that is usually it's not the. Usually it has been the black girl, the fat girl, the sick girl, the disabled girl. She was the sidekick. She was a secondary or a tertiary character, but she certainly wasn't at the very center, and she wasn't the one who was getting the happily ever after. And I want to take those identities and those experiences and those communities that have been on the periphery of cultural narrative and set them firmly at the center. This is the second book in the series. The first book was a heroine who has lupus. You're not reading a lot about. I mean, not that it doesn't happen at all, but there aren't a lot of romance novels that are focused on women who are navigating lupus, you know, and now women.
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Tonya Mosley
Yes, there are a lot of women who. Particularly black women who suffer from lupus. It's one of the highest autoimmune diseases. So you've done a lot of research here and really trying to figure out not only your audience, but the realities of your audience.
- [15:14]
Kennedy Ryan
Yeah, for sure. And I think a big part of this series and kind of a lot of what I write is, and I say this all the time, there's someone for whom you're not too much. And what I mean by that is like, there's someone. We all hope that there is someone who's gonna love us. Hard times, through bad times, through difficult situations. You know, in real, the book where, before this book, one of the series where the heroine has lupus, she's going through a flare, you know, and she's self conscious because she has lesions and she has bald spots and her body, she is in a. Is in a battle. And yet this romantic partner is. It's. He's imper. Impervious of all of that. Like, he's like, I love you. I'm here for you. I'm gonna stand by you. What an. You just be surpr at all of the emails and messages and DMs that I get from women who are living with chronic illnesses who are incredibly moved by that, because that is their hope, you know, Their hope is that there is someone in real life who will love them that way, you know? You know, even given difficult circumstances that they're navigating in real life. And I want that you asked, you know, about romance. Romance, to me, is the genre of hope. It is the genre of love, obviously, but I think it's also the genre of hope, and it's the genre of joy. And people sometimes talk about the happily ever after being, quote, unquote, predictable. But every genre has its, you know, has its. You know, this is. These are the boundaries of the genre. These are the things that you can expect from the genre. And it's just that with, you know, romance, it's a happily ever after. Me, especially writing black and brown and queer and chronically ill and fat people, like, when I am writing those identities that in the real world, a lot of times our outcomes are compromised. A lot of times our outcomes are not as good as other groups. I can create a world where we are guaranteed joy.
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Tonya Mosley
But the thing about that, I just want to say, my producer, Teresa, said she almost wished after reading Score, that she didn't know a happy ending was coming because it sort of took the suspense out of it. If the reader knows that these two end up together, for instance, where's the real tension? You're kind of pushing back against that idea.
- [17:39]
Kennedy Ryan
Yeah, I think a little bit. I mean, in the sense that every, you know, genre has its conventions. You know, it has its expectations. And some people will say, well, a romance novel doesn't have to have a happily ever after. Yeah, actually, by definition, it does. A love story may not, you know, like, maybe they die in the end, but with romance, I think that it's not even just about the ending. It's about the journey. It's about what we're learning about each other and about ourselves. Because in, for example, since we're talking about Score, there's so much that happens. There's so much self discovery and self understanding that both of these characters are experiencing. For me, it's not even just the point that they're gonna end up together. It is, what do they learn about themselves and how do they navigate and start to build a life together that's gonna look different in every book. So if there are people who want a happy ending, they don't want to know that it's going to end happily. Maybe romance is not their bread and butter. But I think that for people who love romance, and I have a lot of what I call non romance romance readers, and usually there are people who don't typically read romance, and they'll say something like, I don't read romance novels, but I read Kennedy Ryan because they feel like there's something different about the way I'm approaching the genre that appeals to them. But I can see that if someone doesn't want that aspect of it to be be consistent, that maybe that's not the genre for them or maybe they don't read it as much as others. The part about the happily ever after that I think is so amazing, especially for black women, for chronically ill women, for women who are in the real world navigating uncertain outcomes, especially the timeline we're living in now, I am creating a space where you see someone who looks like you get joy and get a happily ever after. And for some people, they don't get to see that in real life. And it is encouraging and it's hopeful for them to see it even in fiction. There's so many women who have told me I decided to give love a chance again after I read one of your books. And I'm like, you know, it's fiction, right? And they're like, yeah. But something about it encouraged me and made me feel like maybe I shouldn't give up on it quite yet. So I think that's good. I think that giving people hope and joy is, especially in the times we're living, there's not a downside to that for me.
- [20:10]
Tonya Mosley
If you're just joining us, my guest today is romance novelist Kennedy Ryan. Her new novel is called Score. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
- [20:22]
NPR Announcer
250 years ago, the nation's founders considered a free press a critical protection for we the people. Today, the NPR network proudly upholds your First Amendment rights with reporting accountable only to you.
- [20:36]
David Biancolli
You.
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NPR Announcer
It's something we protect together. Power, a truly independent press. Support the NPR Network@plus.NPR.org There have been
- [20:47]
Kennedy Ryan
some fantastic movies released this year, and we know you can't see them all. So we're recommending some great films that might have flown under the radar to add to your watch list. Listen to pop culture happy hour via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:05]
Tonya Mosley
This is FRESH air. I'm Tonya Moseley, and my guest today is romance novelist Kennedy Ryan. She's the first black author to win the Rita Romance's highest honor, and she's published more than 20 novels in just over a decade. She came to fiction after careers in journalism and autism advocacy, and she's known for love stories that center the people the genre often leaves out. Her best selling novel, Before I Let Go is being adapted for Peacock, and her latest score follows two former college sweethearts reunited while making a film about the Harlem Renaissance. I want to talk a little bit about the stories within the stories because in this book, as I mentioned, it's about two former college sweethearts who are reunited while working on a film about the Harlem Renaissance. And they aren't living in the Renaissance, but they're making a movie about it. And this isn't the first time that you have actually gone to that time period. Your novel Real Lives there, too. What is it about that period that you like going back to that pulls you there?
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Kennedy Ryan
Yeah, I think I, like so many, am fascinated by the Harlem Renaissance. I think that it's probably like one of the greatest concentrations of of American art and specifically black American art in history. And just how it really like was incredibly exported and impacted literally the entire world and all culture, you know, jazz and also the blues and our art and our writing and all of the great figures who came out of it, Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston and, you know, all of these incredible writers who emerged during that time period. For me, as a writer and as a creative, it's the most, probably the most fascinating artistic era for me in history. And you know, this it's kind of like a movie inside of that story. And I honestly thought about it's Dessie Blue is the fictional character. You know, she's a fictional historical character,
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Tonya Mosley
although she feels very real. Like she might be based on someone real.
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Kennedy Ryan
Yes. Well, you know, and she is based on kind of an amalgamation of people like Ma Rainey and Billie Holiday and performers from that era. It's kind of an amalgamation of all of these. Her, her queerness, she's bisexual is a reflection of that, her grit, you know, her talent, her experience. Some of the things that I document in real actually are things that I, I read about these women experiencing in real life, you know, fictionalizing those things to make it feel even more authentic. I'm always amazed that people are like, I am Googling Dessie Blue. And I cannot find her.
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Tonya Mosley
And I'm not because they think she's real. But also because you do have people who are real in your book sometimes. So I can see how that works. How do you make the decision to say, I'm gonna make this character fictional and I'm gonna put in drop in this real person?
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Kennedy Ryan
Yeah. I think that having a fictional character like Dessie Bleu rub up against, like, real who would have been that character's contemporaries, it makes it feel more real, and it also gives me the opportunity to share and educate the aud a lot of characters like real life people whose contributions in their art may have been lost or may have been buried or may have been forgotten. You know, in Score, we're talking about Gladys Bentley. You know, they go to a club and she is performing in Harlem in her white tuxedo and her white top hat and her close cut, you know, hair, and she's presenting very masculine, but she's a woman, and she is, in real life, an LGBTQ pioneer, you know, a trailblazer. So to have someone like that in the book, it is a reflection of what was actually going on in that time, and it makes it feel more real and more grounded in reality.
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Tonya Mosley
I want to talk a little bit about your research, your journalistic approach to your research, and also a little bit about the choices you make and the stories that you become fascinated in and end up writing about. Back in 2019, you wrote the Kingmaker, which was about an indigenous activist fighting a pipeline. And it's a romance novel too, as well. And as part of your writing process, you spent four months interviewing Native American women. I think 10 of them.
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Kennedy Ryan
Yeah.
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Tonya Mosley
What was the spark that made you want to live inside of that world?
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Kennedy Ryan
I saw a documentary. I can't remember the name of the documentary now, but it was a documentary about the pipeline protest that we saw, you know, I don't know, 2015, 2016, like, somewhere around there. But it was that it was a documentary about all of the pipeline protests. And I just. It kind of sparked something in me wanting to explore that world. And I was very hesitant. You know, I had to really, really assess if that was a story that I felt like I should tell or that I could tell. And I set certain kind of like, expectations for myself. Like, these are the things you have to do if you're going to write this story. Because I have seen people who are not black women write black women's stories. And sometimes I'm like, oh, maybe you shouldn't have done that, you know, and I didn't, I didn't want that. And I also didn't want to take up space that was someone else's if I didn't feel like I could do this story justice. And I saw a lot of, of a lot of common ground between what Indigenous women in this country navigate and what black women in this country navigate. But before I wrote that, I, I have seen a lot of harmful representation of indigenous people written by people who are not indigenous. And so I had to really interrogate that for myself before I wrote that book. And I, I found a lot of people that I wanted to talk to. And there were some of them who were like, I, I don't, I'm not sure that I want to talk to. Last time I talked to somebody, they wrote a really bad book or they wrote a really bad article. And one of them even said to me, I will talk to you if you read these books. And she gave me like three books to read, and I read them all. And then I came back to her and I was like, are you ready to talk? And she said, you read them? And I said, well, yeah, that's kind of my job.
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Tonya Mosley
Our guest today is writer Kennedy Ryan. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Moseley, and this is FRESH air.
- [27:54]
Peter Sagal
This week on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we asked indie rock legend Stephen Malchus, leader of the band Pavement, if he ever gets recognized.
- [28:01]
Craig Ferguson
Sometimes.
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Unidentified Interviewee
Yeah.
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Kennedy Ryan
More when I go.
- [28:02]
Craig Ferguson
I mean, if I hang out in
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Kennedy Ryan
front of a record store next to the P section.
- [28:08]
NPR Announcer
Yeah.
- [28:08]
Craig Ferguson
Yeah, probably.
- [28:09]
Peter Sagal
Yeah. Don't miss our full conversation and the rest of our games. You can listen to the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast. Podcast.
- [28:18]
Kennedy Ryan
Recently, cybersecurity researchers discovered a striking computer virus seemingly related to the conflict between the US And Iran over Iran's nuclear program. Everything about this thing screams special a cunning cyber weapon meant to gaslight nuclear scientists. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [28:43]
Tonya Mosley
This is FRESH air. Today I'm talking with romance novelist Kennedy Ryan. I want to go back to your childhood for a moment. You growing up in a small town in North Carolina. When you say small, how small are we talking?
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Kennedy Ryan
It is? So it was so small that, like it would had a phone number for one town. We had a poa. No, a route. We had a route for our mailing, for our mailing address. And I went to school for another town. Like it was in between small towns, honestly.
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Tonya Mosley
And how far from the biggest town? What was the biggest town?
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Kennedy Ryan
Oh, the biggest town would be like Durham. And it was probably like 45 minutes, 40 minutes or so to get there. Basically, this is a strip of land that my grandfather owned and like as far as the eye could see, it was just farmland that he owned. And he sold all of off all of these plots of land to put his kids, I think it's 12 of them. My dad will kill me because I get it wrong, but put all of his kids through college and he only kept, he kept a plot of land for each of them. And that was our community. So you're talking about basically community of my family. And then on the outskirts of that, people who bought the land that my family owned. It's my uncle living to the left and it's my uncle living to the right and it's my uncle, you know, living in front of me, who's raising hogs and on a Christmas morning brings them a little white cheesecloth bag with slaughtered, you know, sausage. It is, you know, we. It is a pear. It's pear and peach trees in my backyard. It's, you know, a grapevine, it's cherry trees, it's a garden. My dad coming straight home from work, going straight to like pull collard greens and string beans. I am a country girl, you know, through and through.
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Tonya Mosley
It sounds like it.
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Kennedy Ryan
Through and through, yes.
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Tonya Mosley
You're. Your dad was also a college administrator for several HBCUs, historically black colleges. It's interesting because they feature prominently in many of your books. They often HBCUs are there. He was an academic and your mother a preacher?
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Kennedy Ryan
Yes, yes. Well, I mean, and my mom had a full time job. She was a dental hygienist, but she also was a preacher. And then later on that's what she did full time. But they, and now they're both preachers. Now they have a church together. But yeah, so, I mean, I grew up. My dad is such a huge part of why I love language. You know, he has two master's degrees and a doctorate. But my mom is the one who really fostered my love of reading because she's a big reader and I'm the classic, you know, before we had screens, you know, with the flashlight under the covers, reading well into the night. So I had. They're amazing. They, you know, they have a huge shaping force.
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Tonya Mosley
That famous story that you tell all the time about your mother saying, oh no, you cannot read these types of novels. But do you remember what you were reading and what she caught you reading?
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Kennedy Ryan
You know, and it wasn't even a caught because I didn't know that she would object. I was reading. I don't remember the specific title, but it was a historical romance, you know, and it's got like a woman on the COVID with her breasts spilling over the bodice and, you know, a half naked man. And I'm like, look, mom, you know, I just. I didn't. It didn't. I was just like, I love this. And my mother was.
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Tonya Mosley
And back in the day, they used to have them along the grocery store checkouts.
- [32:29]
Kennedy Ryan
Yes, yes, absolutely. And I would. I was at the. The library was like one of my favorite places in the world. And it's not like it was this expans and it was this huge selection, but I loved it. You know, it's where I first read Jane Eyre. It's where I first read, you know, all of the classics and Toni Morrison. And, you know, like, that's where I found. That's where I kind of discovered my love for language and for reading. And then one day I was like, I think I. I was in the eighth grade and one of my classmates handed me one of the like, historical romances. That's how I. I came. Came into it was. She handed it to me because she loved it. And I took it home and started reading them. And I didn't even think to like hide it from my mom. It's just I told her about it or she saw me with it and she was horrified, you know, and then I was. She was like, you are not allowed to read them, you know, with distance from it. I understand why she was monitoring what I. What I ingested. I completely understand that because we now have parental controls and all of those things. But as an eighth grader, you're just like, I'm gonna do what I want to do. I'm gonna sneak around and do it. If you tell me that I can't do it. So. Yeah, but it's a funny story for us now because I did not tell her until I was in my 30s that I had hidden all those romance novels from her. She thought I had stopped reading them, so.
- [33:56]
Tonya Mosley
Because after she told you to stop, you continued and then you just collected them so many that you kind of had a little stockpile in closet or something.
- [34:04]
Kennedy Ryan
In my closet? Oh, yeah. Hundreds and hundreds of romance novels, like hidden at the back of my closet behind clothes. And it was like literally in my 30s when I was like, you know, when you told me to stop reading romance Novels. I didn't.
- [34:17]
Tonya Mosley
You know, I want to go to a very, very important, pivotal moment in your life that really change things for you was before you started writing fiction, your son. You have one son. He was diagnosed with autism. Two years old, and the very next day, your husband loses his job.
- [34:42]
Craig Ferguson
Yeah.
- [34:42]
Tonya Mosley
Take me. Take me to that week.
- [34:45]
Kennedy Ryan
Oh, one of the toughest weeks of my life, I think, because my son is now 25 and 23 years ago, like, the landscape for autism was very different than it is now. Like, we didn't have a lot of the solutions. We didn't have a lot of the supports, the waivers, the, you know, the financial support, insurance. Everything was considered experimental. So you're paying out of pocket for everything. And then I think there was just a lot we didn't know. Like, literally, when the doctor diagnosed my son, he told me that I should. That told my husband to give me time to grieve. That's. That's the. The word he used. And he said, you know, motherhood is gonna be just so different than what she thought it would be. And it been very different than I thought it would be. I think, you know, autism is a spectrum, and it looks different for different people. And my son is very impacted. Even at 25, he's still only partially verbal, and, you know, he kind of works at his own. His own time. You know, there are certain benchmarks that I thought he would reach when he was 10 that he still hasn't reached or that he reached much later. One of the things I think that this journey has taught me is not to compare myself, my son, our life to anyone else's.
- [36:07]
Tonya Mosley
Things got really dark.
- [36:09]
Kennedy Ryan
You're.
- [36:09]
Tonya Mosley
In this moment, the healthcare system has not really caught up to what it needs to for you as a mother. And the financial impact was just. It was a lot for you in that time.
- [36:22]
Kennedy Ryan
Yeah.
- [36:23]
Tonya Mosley
Instead of only surviving it, though, you built this advocacy group that. Then a therapy group for couples going through it. And I. Kennedy, I just always marvel at people who build the thing they need when they have the least amount of resources or power. And when did you realize you'd have to build the thing that didn't exist in order for you to actually survive?
- [36:49]
Kennedy Ryan
Yeah. I think it kind of a lot of times came down to, am I gonna pay for therapy or am I gonna pay my light bill? And I was like. Like the. We shouldn't have to make these decisions. My husband and my. Both of our cars were repossessed. We woke up one morning, the cars were gone. We had to do A short sell on our house. We didn't have food sometimes.
- [37:08]
Tonya Mosley
And my.
- [37:09]
Kennedy Ryan
It taught me a lot about community, too. You know, people just kind of rallying around us and making sure that our family had what we needed. And I just kind of said to the Lord one day, like, when I'm. I'm praying, I'm meditating, and I'm like, I just don't want anybody else to go through this. Like, I don't want anybody else to have to make these decisions. These are impossible decisions. And I decided to start a foundation. I did not have a lot of money. Like, I was not in a place where people would think, oh, you should start a foundation. I was like, I need help, too. But I kind of, like, examined the gaps. There was a gap for therapy, obviously. And so one of the things that we did was a lot of it was, like, only the people. People are only getting SPEEC and OT in school. And when it's summer, a lot of those kids weren't getting those services anymore. So I raised money so that we could supplement and that we could pay for that. And then we had. A lot of couples were experiencing marital strain, Whether it's at the very beginning or people who have been in this a really, really long time and are worn down. We started doing marriage retreats. We also started paying for couples therapy. And then I thought about, gosh, if it's this hard for. And I have a partner, how hard is it for people who are single parents? And then we started programming that was specifically targeting single parents and their entire family, like, all of their children. So for me, it was just kind of like a reflection of the gaps that I was seeing.
- [38:49]
Tonya Mosley
So you're going through all of that, and, like, what was it like at night then? You're sitting at a computer and then writing romance. Is that how it worked or how
- [38:58]
Kennedy Ryan
you're like, how did we get here? You know, my husband found a job, and it took him away a lot at night. And so it was just me and my son. And this is when he was younger. And a lot of kids who are on the spectrum are fascinated with water. And my son was so fixated on water. He and I would go to this river because we lived in Atlanta at the time. We lived in Atlanta for 20 years. You know, that's kind of home to us for the most part. I would take him to this river in Atlanta every evening, and he would frolic, you know, And I, as I was sitting there, this.
- [39:32]
Unidentified Interviewee
This.
- [39:32]
Kennedy Ryan
This community built around a river called Rivermont just started kind of in my imagination. And it became the centerpiece for the first series that I ever wrote called the Bennett series that just sitting on the riverbank every night watching my son play in the water, I just started dreaming about this imaginary place called Rivermont and the this family and you know, all of and it became four books, you know.
- [39:57]
Tonya Mosley
Kennedy Ryan, thank you so much for this conversation.
- [40:00]
Kennedy Ryan
Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me.
- [40:03]
Tonya Mosley
Romance novelist Kennedy Ryan. She's the first black author to win the RITA romance's highest honor and she's published more than 20 novels in just over a decade. Her latest novel is called Score. Coming up, TV critic David Biancooli reviews the five part documentary series Craig American on Purpose. This is FRESH air.
- [40:28]
Kennedy Ryan
I'm Jesse Thorne.
- [40:29]
David Biancolli
This week on Bullseye, Craig Ferguson on
- [40:31]
Kennedy Ryan
his love of all things American, including you.
- [40:34]
Craig Ferguson
New York City people have their own little things, but they somehow think New York is not America as the rest of America. But I feel the opposite. I think it's full on America.
- [40:44]
Kennedy Ryan
That's Bullseye. Find us in the NPR app@maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:53]
Peter Sagal
This week on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we talk to best selling author Carol Clare Burke about how it feels to write the hit book of the summer.
- [40:58]
Tonya Mosley
I've been very dissociative, so that's a problem for my future therapist.
- [41:02]
Peter Sagal
Yeah, I see it. Let's talk about the fact you're not in therapy. That's fascinating. Don't miss our full conversation and the rest of our games. Listen to the Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:17]
Tonya Mosley
This is FRESH air. Craig Ferguson, who hosted the Late Late show on CBS from 2005 to 2014, has returned to television with a five part documentary series on CNN. The series is called Craig Ferguson American On Purpose and it concluded last Saturday, but is available to stream on CNN.com the CNN Network is presenting a marathon showing the entire series on July. Our TV critic David Biancooli has this review.
- [41:47]
David Biancolli
Craig Ferguson was born in Scotland and moved to the United States to pursue a career in comedy. He did well. In 2005. He earned the job of host of the Late Late show on CBS, a job he held for just shy of 10 years. Ferguson took a deconstructionist, David Letterman type approach to his role and kept evolving his style and his personal voice. Monologues weren't a string of topical jokes, but became loose one way conversations about whatever Ferguson was thinking and Feeling he didn't have a sidekick, so he invented one or had someone invent one, a comedy robot. And partway through the show's run, in 2008, Craig Ferguson applied for United States citizenship, passed the test and became a US citizen. He filmed that process and showed it on his program, but didn't leave the idea there. In 2009, he wrote a memoir called American on Purpose. And now he has a five part documentary series with the same name on CNN in which he travels the country and speaks to Americans about America.
- [42:59]
Craig Ferguson
What is America? Is it a promise, A contradiction, A dreams? Everyone has their own idea, including me. I wasn't born here, but I love this place. I want to show you why I became American on purpose.
- [43:16]
David Biancolli
Even though Craig Ferguson is a comedian by profession, he's not doing this series just for laughs. Well, not just for laughs. He retains his goofy sense of humor and his appetite for the unpredictable and the uncontrollable, like interviewing tourists in the middle of Time Square. But he's there to say something and to hear what other people have to say. On the occasion of our country approaching its 250th anniversary, one of the questions he asks is about the American Dream, which I found fascinating as a TV historian. More than 50 years ago, Keyed to the American Bicentennial, PBS presented a wonderful series called the Great American Dream Machine, asking the very same question.
- [44:00]
Unidentified Interviewee
Question.
- [44:01]
David Biancolli
Here's how earlier in 2026, Ferguson's interviewees answered it.
- [44:06]
Kennedy Ryan
One thing that I think about America is freedom. Also the dream.
- [44:10]
Unidentified Interviewee
American Dream.
- [44:10]
Tonya Mosley
Yes.
- [44:10]
Craig Ferguson
What is the American Dream?
- [44:12]
Tonya Mosley
You can work hard.
- [44:13]
Craig Ferguson
Yeah.
- [44:13]
Tonya Mosley
And achieve your goals.
- [44:15]
Craig Ferguson
What do you think the American Dream is?
- [44:17]
Unidentified Interviewee
The ability to embrace your aspirations.
- [44:21]
Craig Ferguson
Be happy. Be happy.
- [44:23]
NPR Announcer
Yes. Be happy.
- [44:24]
Kennedy Ryan
Build your own future on your own way. I ran a marathon.
- [44:27]
David Biancolli
So you have.
- [44:28]
Kennedy Ryan
Oh, you right.
- [44:29]
Craig Ferguson
Congratulations. The American Dream. What does it look like to you?
- [44:33]
Kennedy Ryan
I think just having the opportunity and options to do whatever you want to do, whether it's running a marathon in New York City, freedom of religion, freedom of choice, just everything. You can be yourself.
- [44:45]
Craig Ferguson
Yeah.
- [44:46]
David Biancolli
In another sequence, Ferguson burrows into the origins and intentions of our country's founding daughter documents in Philadelphia, he gathers some historians and actors who portray Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to stand over historical documents and discuss them. We hear in this clip from a historian and the actor playing Jefferson talking in his own voice about his own opinions. And Ferguson, all of them have thoughts on the subject.
- [45:14]
Unidentified Interviewee
The Constitution is not meant to limit the people. The Constitution is meant to. Meant to limit the government. People have laws to protect them from each other, keep each other from breaking each other's arms, picking each other's pockets. People have constitutions to protect them from their government.
- [45:28]
Craig Ferguson
There's a writer of our time, George Orwell, who said he who controls the past controls the present. It was the use of a tyrant, the idea that if you can lie about the past, you can control the situation situation that exists in the moment. One of the great things about this amendment is that it allows us to look at our past and not change it, but argue about it.
- [45:55]
Unidentified Interviewee
What the First Amendment establishes in clear writing is that it is impossible to have a conversation if you're not allowed to disagree. It is American to respect someone who disagrees.
- [46:06]
David Biancolli
This discussion of freedom of speech is timely right now, and not only because of our country's impending anti anniversary. If the merger deal goes through between Warner Bros. Which owns cnn, and Paramount, which owns cbs, it's already been approved by the Department of Justice. The content of future CNN programming may be adversely affected. CBS News management already has weakened the legacy and integrity of 60 Minutes. Many media insiders fear CNN may be similarly targeted with editorial interference if the merger is finally analyzed. If that happens, a show like Craig Ferguson American on Purpose may soon be an endangered species on cnn. Ironically, it may even be history.
- [46:55]
Tonya Mosley
David Biancooli reviewed Craig Ferguson American on Purpose. You can catch it on the CNN website, and all five episodes will also air on CNN on July 5th beginning at 8pm Eastern. If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our conversation about a new breed of ticks bringing dangerous illnesses and allergies, or our conversation with Isaac Butler on how art saved his life, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of Fresh AIR interviews. You can also find some of our video interviews on YouTube under this Is Fresh Air. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers recommendations on what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free news newsletter@whyy.org Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with help today from Adam Stanischewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne Marie Baldwin, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CB Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show with Terry Gross. I'm Tonya Moseley.
- [48:23]
Kennedy Ryan
The fatal shooting of a teenager at A protest in Seattle has gone unsolved for six years. This is open. In your face.
- [48:31]
David Biancolli
How are there no answers?
- [48:33]
Kennedy Ryan
Our investigation has uncovered new evidence and witnesses who say they've never talked to police. Did police ever call you?
- [48:40]
Unidentified Interviewee
Not once.
- [48:41]
Kennedy Ryan
Listen to We Keep Us Safe, a new true crime series on the Embedded podcast from npr.
- [48:48]
Peter Sagal
Hi, it's me, Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait, don't tell me. It's summer. And if you want to turn your pool party into a nerd fest, check out our newspaper quiz. We got comedians, we got celebrities, we got games to help you laugh about the week's news. Yeah, that news. It'll be just like we're all hanging out at your backyard barbecue. Listen every week to Wait, Wait, don't tell me. On the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.