Unsuitable Reading?

If you happen to be in the Durham, North Carolina area this coming Monday, October 20, consider stopping by the Duke University campus and joining me and other romance devotees in a conversation about "Women, Fiction, & Popular Perception." I'm honored to have been asked to join historical romance novelist Maya Rodale and professor Rachel Seidman (whose students created the Who Needs Feminism? project) for the inaugural event in Duke's Unsuitable series, a speaker series intended to engage students and members of the wider Durham community in a discussion of women's interests and popular fiction. Duke professors Laura Florand and Katharine Brophy DuBois, who both also have flourishing careers as popular romance novelists (DuBois under the pen name Katharine Ashe), will be joining forces to teach a newly developed seminar on the history of the romance novel this coming spring, and hope to open the conversation beyond the classroom through this innovative series.

The other panelists and I will be giving brief presentations about our work, but the majority of the evening will focus on the questions and ideas that audience members bring to the table. This event is free, open to the public, and includes a buffet dinner! I hope to see a few RNFF readers out in the audience.

For those not in NC, I'll be reporting back about the panel in next Friday's post. In the meantime, those eager for more romance recommendations and reviews should check out the Queer Romance Month blog/website. I've been filling up my e-reader with recommended authors and titles, and am looking forward to reading and writing about ones that share feminist concerns with RNFF readers.