One day in Romancelandia lasts approximately 1.3 Earth years. Now imagine a week. To help you keep up, we’ve gone through the tweets about last week’s highs (and lows) of representation in romance to bring you our Weekly Romance Update.
These are tweets from or about BIPOC, LGBTQIAP+, and/or otherwise underrepresented writers, reviewers, and list curators. If you don’t already, please follow these accounts and be sure to always retweet the original post.
This week, Entangled announced an incubator program in partnership with Cultural, Interracial, Multicultural Special Interest Chapter of Romance Writers of America. Tasha shared an “unpopular” opinion that turned out to be pretty popular.
Rosemary provided some history on similar programs and a different perspective in this thread.
Whatever your take on Entangled’s incubator program, publishers should heed Jackie’s words. “Diversity” on gatekeepers’ terms is not diversity.
Nor is it marginalized people’s job to turn their pain into a consumable product, as Elle wrote about.
And the gatekeepers will remain the same as long as the toxic culture in publishing described in this thread continues.
Oppressors fear that, if given the opportunity, the oppressed would treat them exactly how they’ve been treated.
We hope all the RITA judges think about this. 👆
Did you know #RomanceClass has a podcast where they read excerpts of novels by Filipino authors?
RomBkPod, the long awaited podcast from the #RomBkLove folks is here! Check out their first episode and the giveaways they’ll be doing all month.
And unless you’ve been trapped in the woods with no internet, you know that the Romance for RAICES auction started today, and competition is already fierce! All proceeds will go to RAICES.
Something to look forward to! We’re launching a new feature this month—In the Loveseat—where we’ll basically gush over someone and tell you how to support their work. Our first one will be this September 17.
We’re continuing to build our Representation in Romance directory, which you can preview at bit.ly/RSJ_RIRD. We only publish author-provided information, which authors can submit at bit.ly/RSJAuthorEntry. Books can be submitted at bit.ly/RSJBookEntry.
We hope you have a week filled with books and joy and all the good things! And if we have missed anything important, please let us know. Our DMs are open. You can also submit anonymous feedback at bit.ly/RSJfeedback.
If you appreciate the work we do, please consider buying us a ko-fi to help fund our giveaways of romances by underrepresented authors bit.ly/RSJkofi. Thank you!