About Mo

A tall bearded man with glasses stands next to a tall redhaired woman with tattoos. He wears a suit with a blue tie, she wears a black dress. They are both smiling.
Just assume Alan and I always look exactly like this.

My government name (and the name on my books and other published work) is Maureen Ryan. My parents never did, but you can call me Mo. Almost everybody does! If you want to know more about me, here goes:

Critic, author, and award-winning journalist Maureen “Mo” Ryan is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and has written for Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Salon, GQ, Vulture, The Hollywood Reporter, TV Guide, Slate and Polygon, among other publications. Ryan, who was named the best TV writer in America by Complex in 2013, previously worked as the chief television critic at Variety, Huffington Post, and the Chicago Tribune.

Her first book, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, which the New Yorker called “galvanizing,” came out in 2023, during the dual industry strikes, and it immediately hit the New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-seller lists. The chapter on the hit drama Lost excerpted in Vanity Fair made news around the world, as did her rollercoaster of an interview with Jeff Garlin and other in-depth coverage of Hollywood misconduct and exploitation.

Ryan, who has a Master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, served for many years on the juries of the Peabody Awards and the AFI Awards. She has appeared as an expert on CNN’s Reliable Sources, the BBC, NPR, and ABC’s World News Tonight, and appears in the documentaries We Need to Talk About Cosby and This Changes Everything. She served on the board of the Television Critics Association, and she was the founding editor of The Official X-Files Magazine way back in the ’90s (when she also was in a band and published a music zine named Steve Albini Thinks We Suck).

Ryan serves on the board of Callisto, which is a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting survivors and finding serial perpetrators. This winter, she will burrow into a cabin in New Hampshire – courtesy of a MacDowell Fellowship – to work on her exciting next book, which is still secret for now!

Ryan can be found in various places online, and when not blogging here like it's 2005, she's often on Bluesky and Instagram. An avid gardener, a longtime Buddhist and a raiser of Monarch butterflies, she lives in the Chicago area with her family.

The picture is of Mo with critic, author and generally delightful person Alan Sepinwall, and it was taken by director Michelle MacLaren.

Start your own thing

Enjoying the experience? Get started for free and set up your very own subscription business using Ghost, the same platform that powers this website.