Romance

For years, RWA's members of color had felt stigma and hostility like that experienced by Huguley and Malone; they'd felt unwanted, disrespected, or simply shut out. So had the queer members, and the poly members, and everyone else who didn't quite fit into the traditional romance mold.  Read more

I love romance. I loved it long before I ever fell in love, and romance narratives served as a kind of template for my own early love-affairs. I filled out diaries with imagined meet-cutes between my crushes and me, assigning them lines I had read some other, more sophisticated love interest say.  Read more

As a controversy over bias and a lack of transparency at the Romance Writers of America continues to roil the country's foremost writers association for romance writers, the RWA has announced that it will postpone the 2020 RITA Contest until next year. The RITA Award is the U.S.'s top prize for romance fiction.

Last year, the Strand Bookstore in New York convened an all-star panel titled Let's Woman-Splain Romance! The line to get in the door stretched down the block, and the room was thrumming with glee even before the panel started. This was not an audience that needed to be told that smart women read romance novels, or that the genre could be feminist.  Read more

The romance genre is a juggernaut that continues unabated.

It's a billion-dollar industry that outperforms all other book genres, and it's remarkably innovative, with a strong tradition of independent and self-publishing.  Read more