He was born and raised in Los Angeles, the son of a fifth-generation Chinese American father and a Korean immigrant mother. Ryan organized the exhibitions Serve the People at Interference Archive and Roots at Chinese American Museum, both focused on the Asian American movements of the 1970s. A Kundiman Fellow, he holds an MFA in Fiction from Rutgers-Newark and served on the Board of the Jerome Foundation.

He is currently the Administrative Director of Brooklyn Zen Center, which oversees Ancestral Heart Temple, a residential training center where he lived for two years. At BZC, he’s facilitated workshops on undoing patriarchy and for BIPOC practitioners, and received jukai (ethical precepts) in 2019.

He writes and speaks regularly on the intersections of diaspora, Buddhism, and the arts.