Lesbian author Terry "Tuff" Ryan died of cancer at her home in San Francisco last Wednesday, May 16. She was 60.
Ms. Ryan was a technical writer, book reviewer, poet, and editor, but is best known for her 2001 memoir, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less . She also authored the long-running literary cartoon, "T.O. Sylvester," in collaboration with artist Sylvia Mollick.
Ms. Ryan was born July 14, 1946, in Defiance, Ohio, the sixth of 10 children of a housewife and a hard-drinking machine-shop worker. Growing up a tomboy, she was the first female pitcher for her town's summer youth baseball league. According to her longtime partner Pat Holt, Ms. Ryan knew she was gay from the age of 5.
In the late 1960s, after earning a bachelor's degree in English and journalism from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, Ms. Ryan moved to Chicago, where she took a job editing journals for the American Medical Association. There, she met Irene Ogus (now a San Francisco mortgage broker), and the women traveled cross-country delivering cars. Settling in San Francisco in 1969, Ms. Ryan worked as a copy editor and joined the Daughters of Bilitis, the early lesbian rights organization founded by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.
In 1983, Ms. Ryan met Holt, who at the time was the Chronicle book review editor, when Holt was seeking a new feature for the paper and Ms. Ryan submitted her cartoon. (Holt now runs "Holt Uncensored," a critical Web site about the publishing and bookselling industry.) Ms. Ryan and Holt were married by Mayor Gavin Newsom at City Hall during Valentine's Day weekend in 2004, after Newsom instituted same-sex marriage licenses.
Ms. Ryan's best-selling autobiographical novel told how her recently deceased mother, Evelyn, managed to eke out a living for her family – winning cars, appliances, vacations, and enough money to put a down payment on a house – by writing product advertising jingles for contests. "She had an incredible knack for winning things in the nick of time," Ms. Ryan once told an interviewer. A Chronicle reviewer called the book a "delicate balance of the comic, the tragic, and the occasionally insane."
The book was optioned for a 2005 Dreamworks film of the same name starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.
Ms. Ryan was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, at which point her disease was already quite advanced, involving her lungs and brain. Despite undergoing surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, Holt said, Ms. Ryan's sense of humor was "simply unstoppable."
In addition to Holt, Ms. Ryan is survived by six brothers, three sisters, several nieces and nephews, and her literary agent, Amy Rennert.
A San Francisco memorial service will be held at a date to be announced. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Defiance College Evelyn Ryan Endowment, 701 N. Clinton Street, Defiance, OH 43512.