Ryan Biracree received his BA in poetry and computer music from Bennington College, and his MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. He has taught literature at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, CUNY College of Staten Island, and Sarah Lawrence College, among others, and is currently a librarian, directing the Innovation & Learning Center at the Desmond-Fish Public Library, a makerspace focused on the intersection of technology and the arts and dedicated to promoting social justice and information literacy through free access to technology.

Ryan regularly lectures and holds educational workshops both within the library community and for outside groups, including professional organizations, parent groups, schools & school districts, and student groups, with a special focus on facilitating communication and understanding regarding technology and the internet between children, parents, and educators, as well as digital mental health for children.

He is also a taxidermist and proprietor of Black Bears on Bath Salts, an online antiques and oddities shop specializing in preserved exotic biological specimens. His poems and essays have appeared in various publications, and his taxidermy has been featured on Oddities, Sleepy Hollow, and American Horror Story. He lives with his two daughters in Beacon, NY, where he has been the President of the Sargent Elementary School PTO since 2022

Hey Ryan, why does your website look like this?

In both my professional and personal work, I seek to educate about and work against the enclosure of the open web and the relentless enshittification and corporatization of internet aesthetics, content, and architecture by a sociopathic and ravenously venal capitalist class.

The crappy, goofy, optimistic, and egalitarian aesthetic of the early internet is an assertion of generosity, whimsy, and humanity in the face of AI slop and the unremittingly dour march to techno-feudalism.