The twelve stories found between the covers of What is Invisible span timeand place - from 1920s outport Newfoundland to the streets of downtown St.John's in the 1970s to a condominium complex in Florida in 2000.What is Invisible features a diverse collection of characters...a teenagedbabysitter turned Woolworth's counter girl with a passion for something ofher own, a middle-aged police officer who puts his career on the line tomake working girls feel special, an elderly woman who struggles tounderstand her life after cancer threatens to end it, a young Newfoundlandman living in Fort McMurray who realizes you can't forget who you once were.In her first collection of short fiction, Beth Ryan creates a series ofdistinct worlds, populated by people who make choices based on what theysee, what they believe they see, or what they cannot see at all. On thesurface, these people don't have a lot in common. But most of them live onthe edge of their own worlds, as they shun convention, stray over the line,or act as detached observers.With an unpretentious writing style and careful attention to the details ofpeople's real lives, Ryan explores questions of family, morality, andidentity. The people you will meet in What is Invisible are searching forthe truth but they end up finding some of their answers in their own secretsand lies.

A Luxury of Stars is Beth Ryan’s first novel. Her collection of short fiction, What Is Invisible, won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award in 2004 and was shortlisted for the NL Book Award for Fiction and the APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award.

Her stories have appeared in TickleAce, the New Quarterly, the Newfoundland Quarterly, Hearts Larry Broke, The Cuffer Anthology, and Weather’s Edge, been broadcast on CBC Radio, and won awards from the NL Arts and Letters Competition, the Cuffer Prize, the Atlantic Writing Competition, and the Victoria School of Writing.

For twenty-four years, Ryan made her living as a writer and editor—first in journalism and later in communications and web content. After making a career change in 2011, she is now a counselling therapist in private practice in St. John’s, where she lives with her husband, Stephen Kiraly, in a house filled with books and cats.

Beth Ryan's profile page