Lance Ringel's novel "Flower of Iowa," published as an eBook in 2014, was issued in hardcover in 2020, and has been named a finalist for four literary honors: Lambda Literary Award (Gay Romance), Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award (War & Military Fiction), and IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards (Fiction: Romance, and LGBTQ). Ringel's play "In Love with the Arrow Collar Man," based on the true story of famed illustrator J.C. Leyendecker and his muse-lover Charles Beach, premiered at New York's Theatre 80 St. Marks. Both "Arrow Collar Man" and the musical "Animal Story," for which Ringel wrote books and lyrics, with music by Chuck Muckle, made the semifinals of the New York New Works Film Festival, and his stage adaptation of "Flower of Iowa" subsequently made the finals of the festival. His latest play, "Flash/Frozen," is centered on the tragic 1961 plane crash that took the lives of the U.S. Figure Skating Team. At Vassar College, where he has worked for 21 years, Ringel wrote "Vassar Voices," which premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Meryl Streep, Frances Sternhagen, and Lisa Kudrow. He also wrote the narrative for "At Home in the World," which played in Tokyo, New York, Washington, and Kampala, under the direction of John Caird. A native of central Illinois, Ringel currently resides in both New York City and in Poughkeepsie, NY, with his spouse of 44 years, actor-composer-director Chuck Muckle.
