Ryan North

During his academic career, North co-authored three papers on computational linguistics,[17] and according to his website, his thesis was entitled "Computational Measures of the Acceptability of Light Verb Constructions".[18]

Some of North's original comedy writing appears on the website Madhouse, including Robot Erotica,[19] and prank emails such as attempts to stop other people named "Ryan North" from using his name.[20][21]

In November 2006, Ryan North created the site Every Topic in the Universe Except Chickens,[22] which purports to provide a solution to vandalism on Wikipedia, in that it encourages vandals to vandalize only the article on chickens: "...instead of vandalizing Wikipedia in general, we all just vandalize the chicken article." North reasoned that it was worth trading the reliability of the chicken article if it meant freeing the rest of the encyclopedia from the threat of vandalism because "Dudes already know about chickens." The site received media attention.[23]

A collection of short stories titled Machine of Death was released October 2010 through Bearstache Books.[24] The book, featuring stories and illustrations by various authors and artists, was based on a Dinosaur Comics comic by North of December 5, 2005, with the premise of a machine that predicts the manner of a person's death accurately but in a difficult to understand manner.[25] North was one of its editors, and contributed one of the stories. Machine of Death reached #1 on Amazon.com, beating Glenn Beck and drawing criticism from him as exemplifying a "liberal culture of death".[26]

In November 2012, North launched a Kickstarter project to fund a book entitled To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure, a retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet modelled on Choose Your Own Adventure novels. The project raised more than six times its $20,000 goal in less than a week, and closed on December 22, 2012 having raised $580,905, nearly thirty times their original goal,[27] and a record for a Kickstarter publishing project at that time.[28] The book allows readers to take the role of Hamlet, Ophelia or Hamlet's father and make their own choices throughout the story; the latter characters, as well as over 100 colour illustrations by a range of artists, were added to the book as funding increased.[29] The book made a New York Times Bestseller list.[1]

North was born in Osgoode, Ontario, in 1980. His parents are Anna and Randall North[41] and said in an interview that he has a younger brother, Victor.[4] In an interview, North said that his family lived in rural Osgoode and there was not a lot to do, so spent much of his time on the computer.[4] After high school, he studied computer science at Carleton University in Ottawa, then did his master's degree in computer science at the University of Toronto in Toronto, specializing in computational linguistics.[4]

North once hosted instructions on his website for building cardboard boxes designed to look like elements of Super Mario Brothers, designed by his friend Posterchild. In 2006, a group of teenage girls in Ravenna, Ohio were arrested after they created and distributed several of these blocks, over fears they were bombs.[42][43]

On August 18, 2015, North became stuck in a skate pit with only an umbrella, a leash, his phone, and his dog, Noam Chompsky, after rain made the surface too slick to easily climb with a dog in tow. He posted about his conundrum on Twitter, leading hundreds of Twitter users to reply with suggestions on how to combine the items in his "inventory" to escape, eventually leading to success.[44][45]

North is married to his wife Jenn Klug.[46] As of 2016, they were living in Leslieville, Toronto, Ontario.[4]

• Author, The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003-2005 AD (April 15, 2006, Quack!Media) ISBN 0-7560-0518-3
• Author, Dinosaur Comics: Dudes Already Know About Chickens (2010, TopatoCo) ISBN 978-0-9824862-6-9
• Editor and contributor, Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die (October 13, 2010, Machines of Death) ISBN 0-9821671-2-1
• Author, Everybody Knows Failure Is Just Success Rounded Down: Dinosaur Comics (2011, TopatoCo) ISBN 978-1-936561-90-2
• Writer, Adventure Time Issues 1-35 (2012-15, KaBOOM!)
• Author, To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure (2013, Breadpig) ISBN 978-0-9828537-4-0
• Editor, This Is How You Die; Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death (2013, Grand Central Publishing) ISBN 978-1455529391
• Writer,The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Issues 1-50 (2014-19, Marvel)
• Author, The Midas Flesh Vol. 1 (2014, BOOM! Box) ISBN 978-1608864553
• Author, The Midas Flesh Vol. 2 (2015, BOOM! Box) ISBN 978-1608867271
• Author, Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure (2016, Riverhead Books) ISBN 978-1101983300
• Writer, Jughead Volume 3, Issues 9-14 (2016-17, Archie Comics)
• Author, How to Be a T.Rex (2018, Dial Books) ISBN 978-0399186240
• Author, How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide For The Stranded Time Traveler (2018, Riverhead Books) ISBN 978-0735220140
• Author, Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel (2020, Archaia) ISBN 978-1684156252

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ryan North

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ryan North.

• Dinosaur Comics
• Whispered Apologies
• Truth and Beauty Bombs
• Ryan North's LiveJournal
• The Amazing Regret Index
• Ryan North at University of Toronto
• ProjectWonderful
• Every Topic in the Universe Except Chickens
• Invisible Ink interview with Ryan North
• North interview in the McGill Daily
• "Tall Poppy Interview: Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics" - interview in Torontoist
• Interview with The Webcomic List website
• "Webcomics! Nicholas Gurewitch, Ryan North and Rob DenBleyker share their craft with us." - December 2006 / vol. 3 issue 4 of A Modest Proposal of UTD
• Carleton University alumni profile
• Interview with Ryan about Project Wonderful in ITworld
• "Cartoon-Off: Dinosaur Comics" -(The New Yorker)
• Oh No Robot
• RSSpect