Ryan Madej

Ryan Madej is a Metis writer, publisher, and reviewer from Edmonton, Alberta, working at the intersection of esoteric philosophy, magical realism, and the experimental small-press scene. His fiction is consistently positioned as the contemporary North American analogue to the Borgesian and Argentine magical-realist tradition, with Borges, Kafka, Calvino, Cortazar, Burroughs, Acker, Bolano, Nabokov, and Vila-Matas recurring as touchstones across his work.

His central project is the Midtown Tetralogy (2019 to 2021), a four-novel cycle set in a decaying urban-shadow city called Midtown. The cycle is split across three small presses: his first novel, The Threshold and the Key (VoidFront Press, 2019; reissued by Orbis Tertius Press, 2021), opens the sequence; The Marianas Trench and The Last Train (Orbis Tertius Press, 2020 and 2021) sit at either end; and JEF Books published the middle volume. Outside the tetralogy he has written the occult novella Assassin (Equus Press, London and Prague, 2021) and the metaphysical novel Aurora (self-published via Lulu, 2023), along with short fiction in Expat Press, Alienist Magazine, and Parasol.

Madej is also co-founder, publisher, and reviewer of Orbis Tertius Press, the Edmonton independent imprint he established with Kimberley Palsat in November 2019. Named for the invented country in Borges's story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," the press has built a catalog of more than fifteen titles in five years, with Calvino and Kafka as house influences. He earns his living outside literature, currently as Outreach Support at Boyle Street Community Services, the Edmonton charity that runs street outreach, harm reduction, and housing programs.

His JEF Books title is The Marble Corridor (2020), Book 2 of the Midtown Tetralogy. Start there for the cycle's middle-distance novel, pitched on the storefront as a found artifact and blurbed by Manuel Marrero as an answer to the vacuum left by Cortazar and the magical realists.