Kennedy Ryan

speaker

368 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 2 Jul

Kennedy Ryan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · Writer Kennedy Ryan uses romance novels as a vehicle for discourse · 2 Jul 2026 podcast

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 that

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.

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.

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