Robyn Ryle
photo credit: Joey Ernst
Robyn Ryle is a writer and a professor of sociology and gender studies at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana.
She received her PhD in sociology from Indiana University-Bloomington and is originally from northern Kentucky. She is the author of a young adult novel, FAIR GAME, about a girls’ basketball team that challenges the boys to a high-stakes game, and of THROW LIKE A GIRL, CHEER LIKE A BOY: THE EVOLUTION OF GENDER, IDENTITY, AND RACE IN SPORTS about the history of sports from a sociological perspective.
Books
SEX OF THE MIDWEST – A NOVEL IN STORIES
One foggy morning, an email appears in inboxes across the small town of Lanier, Indiana, population 12,234. “Invitation to Participate: Sexual Practices in a Small Midwestern Town,” the subject line reads. A link leads to an extensive survey. But why has Lanier been chosen? And by whom? Street by street and resident by resident–from the Covid-stricken basketball coach, to the bartender finding her way to writing, to the bureaucrat with a vendetta against the hot-dog vendor–the email opens up the secret (and not so secret) lives of one small town, and reveals the surprising complexity of Midwestern life in our post-pandemic times.
Praise and News
Book Stuff: Living With Post-Pandemic Loneliness with “Sex of the Midwest” Author Robyn Ryle
Robyn Ryle talks about her collection of short stories ‘Sex of the Midwest’
Her Top Priority is to Destroy the Hot Dog Guy
Is My Small Town the Center of the Universe?
PEOPLE’s Best Books of October 2025
6 noteworthy books for October