Ryan Douglass

Ryan Douglass is the author of young adult horror novel The Taking of Jake Livingston, a New York Times bestseller and an ALA Rainbow Book List Pick; The Great Disillusionment of Nick and Jay, a reimagining of The Great Gatsby set in 1920s Harlem; and Night of Madness, a collaboration with the company behind Clown in a Cornfield. His work explores the ways young people fight to survive in hostile worlds. He lives in Atlanta with his dog and spends his free time baking ambitious desserts and scoping out true crime documentaries.

Here Douglass dreamcasts an adaptation of Night of Madness:

Right now, I’m reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona, and I’m loving it. I picked it up partly because of the attention-grabbing cover, and because I’d been wanting to read more fiction that was strange and uncompromising. Lapvona is a dark medieval fable about a boy named Marek whose life of poverty and abuse becomes entangled with the corrupt ruler and religious power structure of his village. It is brutal and unsettling, but also kind of funny. I love how completely Moshfegh commits to the world she creates, how the violence in the book feels embedded in the physical reality of the world rather than placed for cheap shock value. Moshfegh’s willingness to lean into discomfort has helped me develop confidence in approaching darkness in my own work. As someone who’s mostly written YA novels, I love the process of writing a book that doesn’t sanitize mature topics for the comfort of the reader.

Follow Ryan Douglass on Instagram and Threads.

Q&A with Ryan Douglass.

The Page 69 Test: Night of Madness.

My Book, The Movie: Night of Madness.

--Marshal Zeringue