Ryan Bartelmay graduated from the University of Iowa in 1998, where he was a member of the Undergraduate Writer's Workshop, and then went on to Columbia University to receive an MFA in fiction writing in 2005. He lives in Chicago with his wife, daughter and two cats.
Ryan Bartelmay has written a sprawling, ambitious, great hearted novel about what comforts and kills us the most: family. A work of love and fear, secrets and cruelty, by a wonderful new writer. Ryan Bartelmay achieves something like intimate sweep in this funny, soulful novel about love, time, and hope. Sharp, elegant and poignant. - Booklist Miscommunication reigns in Bartelmay's debut novel about the inevitable attrition of self-delusions...a wistful take on the classic American reinvention tale. - Publishers Weekly What a kind, warm-hearted and generous novel! Onward Toward What We re Going Toward is a splendid evocation of America s heartland and the sometimes confused, lost, desperately seeking and often comic souls that populate it.