Okie Craft: An Interview with Samantha Ryan
The Okie Craft Series focuses on the Oklahoma writing life. We interview writers across the state about their writing practice and about what it means to be part of the Oklahoma literary community.
We asked novelist Samantha Ryan about her writing practice and previous works. Here’s what she said.
What does it mean to be an Oklahoma writer? What influence (if any) does living in Oklahoma have on your work?
I love being an Oklahoma writer and writing about Tulsa specifically. Tulsa is a such a unique city - one that is big enough to roam around but small enough where everyone knows someone who knows someone. I enjoy exposing others to Tulsa who might have heard of it only through that one vague reference on Friends or more recently through Tulsa King. We have a vibrant core of writers and artists here who are really invested in making sure the arts remains in Tulsa. A lot of my writing is set in Tulsa, like my first novel, Pride which takes place in a bookstore on Cherry Street.
I love the idea behind Words My Friends Have Thrown Away (2025 SIAMB!). Would you tell us a bit about that book and how you came up with the idea?
Words My Friends Have Thrown Away was a result of writer’s block after I finished one of my novels. I was really stuck and kept thinking back to writing classes I had taken that used prompts and offered constraints. I found that the more boxed in I forced msyelf to approach writing the more creative I would allow myself to be. With this in mind, I posted on social media asking people to give me words and used those words to create little flash pieces through the queer lens that I wanted. I really enjoyed it because I knew the direction I wanted to take it while the people who gave the words didn’t, so it was like a fun little rabbit trail to meet somewhere in the middle. All of the vignettes explore various lenses of queer identity and I really like how the collection was assembled as a whole. Additionally, the cover is really gorgeous work from a local queer artist, Kier Wise-Baker.
Much of your writing deals with queer identity. What role does queer representation play in your books?
There’s a level of endurance required with being a writer and even more with being queer and in the greater context of doing that in a place like Tulsa it’s compounding one after the other. The queer community in Tulsa has a true radiance to it - it’s really supportive and has a flavor of resistance to it in order to be unapologetic in the buckle of the Bible belt. I’d encourage queer writer folk looking for ways to connect to the community to look at organizations like the Queer Lit Collective or Community Pride.
Your short story “Little Brass Bird” was published in our first issue. Would you mind sharing a little about the piece.
“Little Brass Bird” was a story I originally wrote for a competition. It sadly didn’t place and I was always hopeful I could find a home for it. It’s a little scene about a couple who know they are incompatible while shopping at a thrift store to pass the time. It kind of encapsulates that idea of knowing you’re not in the right place with the right person but keep making excuses or justifications to yourself. In the end, the main character is honest with her opinion for the first time and we - as an audience - have the hope that this might be the tipping point she needs to get herself out of this relationship that has been shown to have little value to her. One of my favorite things to write are little micro transactions between people, little moments that maybe define those relationships in ways the characters might not even be aware of. My work tends to be relatively dialogue heavy because I love the platform dialogue provides to expose relationships between characters.
What are you reading now?
I’m currently reading Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall - absolutely obsessed. The voice is really incredible and it is ridiculously funny and I’ve also just started The Audition by Katie Kitamura - it was a Pulitzer finalist for this year and I’m excited to read that one.
What authors have influenced you the most?
On the queer side, certainly TJ Klune. I’m a huge fan of his and his ability to tell an emotional story in such a captivating way. The author that made me want to be a writer was William Faulkner. After reading As I Lay Dying and seeing his use of words on a page in such a specific way - even the shape of how the words were printed - was really eye opening. I’m drawn to the idea that the page itself is an author’s canvas and in my last novel, These Are Not My Final Words I was lucky enough to have a publisher willing to let me do some unusual things with formatting. I think that element of writing is wholly unique to the page - it can’t be replicated in audio or visual media so I think that advantage should really be used more by authors.
Tell us about your writing practice. Do you have a favorite place or time to write? Where do you fall on the "pantser" - "plotter" spectrum of writers?
I’m 100% a pantser. My process can be slightly hectic - typically the novel starts as a singular scene then I work forwards and backwards from that moment. I tend to visualize the scenes like a movie where I can fast forward and rewind to see how each of the pieces connect to one another. I enjoy meandering around the story and building it out until it’s a complete manuscript.
Samantha Ryan is a queer writer from Tulsa, OK where she lives with her needy cat, Baxter, her chunky puppy, Harley and half a dozen plants she can barely keep alive. She earned her degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Tulsa where she was the recipient of the S.E. Hinton Endowed Scholarship for Creative Writing. Her latest novel, These Are Not My Final Words came out in 2025 with Truborn Press.
You can read her short story “Little Brass Bird” in the first issue of Okie Modern.
