The slightly less white, not-quite-so-heteronormative world of the RITA awards

Earlier this week, Romance Writers of America® (RWA) announced their annual list of finalists for the RITA Award, which the organization bestows in recognition of excellence in published romance writing. In 2018, as in 2017, the award will be given in twelve different sub-genre categories, as well as an award for best first book.

Last year, after the 2017 RITA list (for books published in 2016) was announced, I wrote about the predominance of white authors amongst the finalists, as well as the predominance of white and heterosexual protagonists in their books. Out of the 85 distinct finalists (several books were up for best first book and best book in another sub-genre), four featured protagonists of color (with 3 of the 4 featuring a protagonist of color falling for a white partner); 4 books featured same-sex protagonists; 4-6 were written by authors of color.

This year, for the first time, the RITA contest was not restricted to authors with print books; in fact, no print books were allowed to be submitted. Instead, authors and/or publishers were required to submit pdf copies of books for judges to read and score.

Did this shift change the demographics of the winner pool? It did as far as the independent publisher/traditional publisher divide, with a whopping 22 self-published authors as named finalists, far more than had ever finalled before. Almost every sub-genre category (except for Young Adult and Long Historical) included at least one self-published title.

But did the shift change the demographics of the winner pool in terms of race and sexual orientation of the authors? Or their books' protagonists?

Given the report from The Ripped Bodice on "The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing" released earlier this year, which found that fewer romances by authors of color had been published by leading romance publishers in 2017 than in 2016 (6.2% in 2017, down from 7.8% in 2016), I was guessing the answer would be "no." But the answer turned out to be a small but noticeable "yes."


Of course, many books, and most author bios, don't explicitly state a protagonist or author's race. So my calculations below are based on the following:

• In cases where I've read the book, I knew the race of the protagonists, either by being told directly in the narrative, or from context clues in the book

• In cases where I had not read the book, I examined book covers, book descriptions, Goodreads book reviews, and character names for hints about protagonists' racial or ethnic backgrounds, and made my best guess. Major room for error here, so if you see any mistakes below, please let me know!

• Similarly, for authors with whom I was familiar, and/or who had discussed their own racial backgrounds in public, I went with self-represented racial identities. I had to rely on author photographs and guess for the rest. Again, room for error (and correction) here.

Overall Statistics:

# of finalists
    2017: 78
    2016: 85

# of authors of color
    2017: 5-6
    2016: 4-6

% of authors of color
    2017: 6-7.7%
    2016: 4-7%

# of protagonists of color
    2017: 13*                                                     
    2016:   5

% of protagonists of color
    2017: 8.3%*                                             
    2016: 2.9%

# of queer protagonists
    2017: 12     
    2016:  8

% of queer protagonists
    2017: 7.6%                                               
    2016: 4%

Individual Sub-Genre Numbers:

Contemporary Romance Long
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 2 (or 3?)
# of protagonists of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 0

Contemporary Romance: Mid-Length
# of finalists: 9
# of authors of color: 1
# of protagonists of color: 2
# of queer protagonists: 2

Contemporary Romance: Short
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1? (he's a sheikh)
# of queer protagonists: 0

Erotic Romance:
# of finalists: 5
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 0

Historical Romance: Long
# of finalists: 5
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Historical Romance: Short
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 3 (1 is from Spain)
# of queer protagonists: 0

Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance:
# of finalists: 4
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 2

Paranormal Romance:
# of finalists: 8
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1? (several are fantasy worlds, so I couldn't really tell just by looking at the blurbs)
# of queer protagonists: 4

Romance Novella:
# of finalists: 8
# of authors of color: 1
# of protagonists of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 2

Romance with Religious/Spiritual Elements:
# of finalists: 5
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Romantic Suspense:
# of finalists: 9
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1*
# of queer protagonists: 2

Young Adult Romance:
# of finalists: 4
# of authors of color: 1
# of protagonists of color: 1?
# of queer protagonists: 0



I'd be interested to see how the demographics of the RWA membership, and in particular, the demographics of the judges, compares to the demographics of the U.S. as a whole, and how those demographics compare to the percentages in the finalists selected by judges. Last year, RWA stated that it was going to poll its membership about demographic issues, but to date I don't believe any such information has been made public. I hope that it will, and soon.

Because this year's RITA finalist figures suggest that in terms of sexuality, the awards are quite representative of gay male experience, an improvement to celebrate. But though they are less racially imbalanced than last year's, they are still not at all close to reflecting the demographics of the country as a whole. And they do not represent female queer experience at all.

U.S. LGBT population: 3.8%

RITA Finalists with queer male characters: 7.6%

U.S. Census Data on race/ethnicity (2016)

White: 61.3%
POC:  40.9%

RITA Finalists by race/ethnicity:

White: 92.3%
POC:     7.7%



* Update 3/27/18: Author HelenKay Dimon wrote to let me know that the protagonist of The Fixer is biracial (white/Japanese parents). I've updated the overall figures, and changed the numbers in the Romantic Suspense category, accordingly.

RWA's President's Thoughts on Race and the RITA award finalists

I received the following email from Leslie Kelly, President of Romance Writers of America, in response to my blog post last week about the lack of diversity in the RITA award finalists. Her email said that I might share her response, as long as I shared it in its entirety. I am posting it below, along with my response to President Kelly.

Dear Jackie:

Thank you so much for writing. I read your blog post, and you raise some interesting points.

Diversity has been a huge focus for the RWA board for the past three years. We’ve been working steadily to improve our diversity efforts, both within our membership, and in the marketplace.

I don’t know if you are aware of this, but just within the past few years, RWA has:

·         Established a standing Diversity Committee

·         Released a public apology for a hurtful survey conducted more than a decade ago

·         Filled two open Board positions—by presidential appointment and with board approval—with traditionally underrepresented members

·         Established a Diversity Incident or Complaint form online

·         Established a Spectrum Grant that will fully fund the RWA 2017 conference for diverse authors. This year, three authors were selected from the dozens of applicants.

·         Scheduled a Diversity Summit at RWA2017 with authors and industry professionals to address issues of inclusivity in the industry

·         Written and will soon distribute a thorough survey to go to our members, addressing issues of ethnicity and sexuality

Since you are an officer of an RWA chapter, I’m sure you know there are no RITA “nominees” there are only “finalists.” Having nominees would mean RWA chose books through a nomination process, when, in truth, authors enter their books in the contest. The number of books entered definitely doesn’t equal the number of books published in a year.

As for your statistical comparison, I don’t think it’s particularly illustrative. Just because the racial breakdown of the entire population is xyz does not mean that same percentages would correlate to romance novels. I wish it did, since that would mean the industry was more inclusive of authors of all races, creeds and sexuality. It’s not there yet…but we’re working on it.

That’s why RWA is doing things like standing up for our authors of color when editors from major publishers make discriminatory statements at our conference. It’s why we apologize when we’ve made a mistake, why we founded the scholarship, why we formed the committee, why we provided a safe way for members to report issues or incidents, why we scheduled the survey, and why we’re hosting the summit.

The idea of surveying our members on the races/sexual orientations of the characters they write is interesting but at this time, we are more focused on the details of our members themselves. Knowing who we are serving is the first step in making sure everyone is represented and we’re doing the very best we can for all romance authors. Please be on the lookout for the survey, coming in the next month or so, and please encourage your chapter mates to respond.

While I’m writing, I must add, there is strict policy against self-promotion on any RWA-sponsored loop. Sharing a link to a personal blog—even one regarding a post that might interest other RWA members—could be seen as violating policy. We’d appreciate it if you keep that in mind when starting future threads.

Thanks again for writing.

Sincerely—

Leslie Kelly

RWA President

Note: If you wish to share this email, that’s fine, but please do it in its entirety. Thanks!

Dear Leslie:

Thank you for reading my blog post about race and the RITA finalists, and for writing back to me with your thoughts. My apologies for posting a blog link on the loop; since the blog was not promoting my books in any way, I thought it would not be a problem. In future, I will remember that no blog links are allowed on RWA loops.

And my apologies for using the term "nominee" rather than "finalist" in my post. I see how this usage might suggest (incorrectly) that the racial imbalance in the RITA finalists was deliberate on the part of RWA as an organization, rather than a result of the membership selecting finalists. I will edit my post and make a note of the error on my part.

Thank you for sharing the list of RWA's recent efforts to promote diversity in our organization. I was aware of most of these efforts, and applaud the Board's work in this regard. 

The only initiative I wasn't aware of was the upcoming survey on RWA members' ethnicity and sexuality. I am looking forward to completing it, and will encourage NECRWA's members to complete it as well. I hope RWA will share the results with the entire membership.

The statistical comparison that I offered in my blog post was not intended to suggest that RWA itself is biased, but to point to the larger issue of the industry as a whole not being inclusive. The suggestion with which I end the post—that the romance community is behind the children's literature community in collecting data about the racial and ethnic identities of its authors—is where I hoped to make a positive suggestion for a way to move forward, and for RWA to lead the way in such efforts.

A survey of the membership is a good first step. But a survey is a one-time event, and the issue of diversity is an ongoing concern. Has the Board considered including a question about race/ethnicity on its membership form, and on its submission form for the RITA awards? Such changes would be a concrete step toward collecting "illustrative" data, data that would provide solid facts to back up RWA's efforts toward diversity. And it would also allow RWA to track changes over time, to see if its many efforts toward fostering diversity in its membership are actually bearing fruit.

It would also be relatively easy to include a question on the RITA submission form, asking about the race/ethnicity of a submitted book's characters.

Thank you again for responding with thought and care to my post. I appreciate this opportunity to engage with you and with the Board about RWA's ongoing efforts to foster diversity in our organization.

Sincerely,

Jackie Horne

Note: I will be posting your response, and mine to it, on my Romance Novels for Feminists blog. Thanks!

The white, heteronormative world of romance awards

Earlier this week, Romance Writers of America (RWA) announced their annual list of finalists for the RITA Award, which recognizes excellence in published romance writing. In 2017, the award is to be given in twelve different sub-genres, as well as an award for best first book. Out of curiosity, I checked out the Goodreads listing for each book, to see if I could tell from the book covers and descriptions how many finalists* featured protagonists of color. While book descriptions rarely specified the race or ethnicity of characters within, white characters were the norm on the covers of this year's RITA finalists. Out of the 85 distinct finalists, only 4 feature protagonists of color, with 3 of the 4 featuring POC falling for a white lover. An equally low number of books were written by authors of color: 4 (or perhaps 5 or 6; I was unsure of the race of several authors).

4 books depicted same-sex romances. 3 of those books featured white gay male characters, the fourth a lesbian couple, one white, one Indian-American.


85 Finalists
85 x 2 protagonists per book = 170 protagonists
5 protagonists of color = 2.9%

85 Finalists
4 (or perhaps 6) authors of color =  4% (or perhaps 7%)

85 Finalists
85 x 2 protagonists per book = 170 protagonists
8 non-heterosexual protagonists = 4%


US Census 2014 

White                                                                 77.5%
     Non-Hispanic White                                    62.2%
     (Hispanic White)                                          15.3%
African-American                                             13.2%
Indian and Alaska Native                                   1.2%
Asian                                                                   5.4%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander      0.2%
Two or More Races                                            2.5%



Williams Institute Demographic Study on Sexual Orientation

Americans identifying as lesbian or gay:         1.7%
Americans identifying as bisexual:                  1.8%
Americans identifying as transsexual:              0.3%



What's wrong with this picture? And what is RWA going to do about it?

The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been tracking the number of children's books written and/or illustrated by African Americans since 1985, and since 1994, similar numbers for other ethnic and racial groups. Isn't it about time someone (RWA?) starts to do the same for romance?


* I used the term "nominees" here in my original post, which is incorrect; the RWA does not nominate books for the RITA award.

Best Romance Book Lists?

It's November, which means 'tis the season for best books of the year lists. In the past few weeks, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Amazon, and Goodreads (via their Goodreads Choice Award nominations) have culled from hundreds, nay thousands of romance books published in 2015 to come up with 6, 10, 13, or more select few that they deem stand out from all the others issues in the past year. The reasons behind their choices are rarely transparent, if articulated at all; some lists include a byline, so we know who is doing the choosing, while others do not.  What do you make of such lists?

I'm struck by several things. Something to celebrate: the appearance of two romances with gay male couples not just in supporting roles, but in the leads: Elle Kennedy and Sarina Bowen's Him (a Goodreads Reader's Choice nominee) and Alexis Hall's For Real (on the PW list). Some things to decry: no lesbian romances. And, unless I'm missing something because I haven't read all of the books that made the lists, no romances with or by people of color. Lordy, here's hoping that when RWA announces the RITA and Golden Heart nominations, the landscape won't be so blindingly white.

And, since I review romances with feminist sympathies, I was struck by the fact that there is very little overlap between the books on these lists and the books I've written about on RNFF this year. I reviewed Hall's For Real in this post, and Lilah Pace's Asking For It here (both from the PW list). And I just read and enjoyed Him, although when I went to write about it, I found myself leaning more towards writing a post about whether female heterosexual readers are more comfortable with m/m romances in which the protagonists, with the exception of their sexual orientations, embody traditional masculinity (as do the two hockey playing friends who become lovers in Him) rather than a review of the book itself. But I haven't reviewed, or even read, the majority of the other list-making titles.

Because there is little overlap between generally praiseworthy (or generally popular?) romance novels and romance novels with feminist appeal? Because no one reviewer has the time to ferret out, read, and review all potential great romance novels, even when the scope of what constitutes "great" in said reviewer's mind is restricted to feminist-friendly books? Some combination of the two, or some other reason altogether? I was curious enough to go out and get a hold of many of the books on these lists, reading them to see if I could figure out the answer to these questions. Sadly, it's looking like the answer is closer to the former than to the latter, so far.

Hence, then, no feminist-positive review today—I've spent too much time being disappointed by the list books, and not enough time tracking down and reading feminist-friendly titles. I like to keep the review section of the blog to books I feel comfortable endorsing, but I do write up my thoughts on other books I've read on my Goodreads account. I've added a feed showing my current Goodreads reviews to the right-hand sidebar, if any RNFF readers are interested in my take on other romance novels. And I've love to connect with other feminist-minded readers on Goodreads, if you, too, write up your thoughts about your reading there.

In the meantime, anyone have any feminist-friendly romance novels published in 2015 that you haven't yet seen featured on this blog? Would love to hear your thoughts...

Writing the Sex Scene—Not

Whenever we cross paths—shoveling our cars out of a snowbank; picking up a few last-minutes items from the supermarket down the street; clearing away winter's debris in anticipation of the tiny green shoots of spring—my neighbors A and AM always ask me how my novel is coming. AM, a schoolteacher by day, has aspirations of becoming a writer, too, she's told me, although I think that like me, she's in the early stages of the process. A year or two ago, during one of our infrequent talks, she recommended I check out the classes at Grub Street, a well-regarded writing school downtown. Last fall, I finally got around to following up on her suggestion. Unfortunately, though, the class I chose, one which I thought would focus on writing genre fiction, ended up not being the best fit for me; the teacher turned out to be a horror writer who seemed more interested in having us read literary fiction which happened to draw upon popular culture than any popular genre writing itself (with the notable exceptions of a bit of Sci Fi, one superhero comic book, and some James Bond film excerpts). After a few weeks of trying to push the teacher to teach something closer to what I was interested in without much success, I just chalked it up to a bad fit, and finished out the semester.

Next time I ran into A, I mentioned my less-than-happy experience, and ended up a day or two later with a copy of the latest Iowa Summer Writing Festival catalog slipped inside my mailbox, one originally addressed to AM. Not really the place to find a class for a genre romance writer, I guessed, though I thumbed through the pages, just in case. Yes, on the whole the classes seemed far more geared to the M.F.A. crowd than toward genre writers, although some special topic classes gestured toward the not-quite-literary: writing for young adults, writing about food, writing critical reviews. A two-week novel writing class, a class in which students would workshop each other's already written first drafts, caught my eye, but when I read the lines "Our emphasis will be on the literary novel" and "we will look to other literary novels as models for our own," I knew once again I was barking up the wrong tree.

I ran into A again only a week later, and thought for a moment about ducking away before she saw me, bummed out at not being able to reward her and AM's thoughtfulness with the news that it had been worthwhile. But I sucked up my embarrassment and thanked her for her efforts, even while I explained that I wouldn't be booking a plane flight to Iowa any time soon. Undaunted, she replied, "AM subscribes to Poets & Writers. Lord knows that magazine is filled with enough ads for classes. I'll bring over a copy." Another day later, and another delivery arrived in the mailbox: the Jan/Feb edition of P&W. Lots of ads, yes, just as A had described. But for workshops like Iowa's, and for M.F.A. programs from coast to coast. All geared to literary, not genre, writers.

I'm not someone who believes that there's a clear line in the sand between the literary and the popular, though, and wondered if the articles in P&W might be worth perusing, even for a writer focusing on writing genre romance. I was encouraged when, flipping through the Table of Contents, I came across an article with the title "Writing the Sex Scene." I've been struggling with just such a scene in my WIP, and flipped to the article in question, eager to learn what advice the author, poet and novelist Beth Ann Fennelly, had to offer.

Turns out, not very much. As the writers at Salon magazine discovered when they attempted to start a "Good Sex Award" for fiction, literary fiction writers don't often write about sex. Laura Miller, a judge in the 2011 contest, noted that unearthing potential nominees for the award "proved more labor intensive than we'd imagined, not because it's difficult to find good sex scenes in fiction but because its difficult to find any sex scenes in fiction" (P&W 24). Even when literary writers do write such scenes, they're in danger of being laughed at for it; the British journal Literary Review had been handing out the "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" since 1993*. Devised to single out "the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it," the award seems to delight in skewering authors who, when writing about things other than sex, craft sentences many a literary afficionado has found worthy of the highest praise. Past winners of the award have included many celebrated literary authors, suggesting to Fennelly that "it begins to seem as if there are two options for a novelist—write badly about passionate sex, or write well by skipping over the sex" (24).

Or, perhaps, literary folks might want to take a look at how romance writers do it? Unlike their more literary counterparts, romance writers on the whole are not shy about including descriptions of sex in their novels. "Nothing throbbing, nothing turgid" serves as the tagline of Fennelly's article, hinting at the long history of high culture's denigration of genre romance for its embarrassingly "purple prose." While the genre still includes its fair share of overwrought or ungainly language in both sex and non-sex scenes, today's genre romance authors, in contrast to their literary colleagues, can and do write with insight, clarity, and humor about this most human of physical acts. And sometimes even in prose of remarkable beauty.

Three of the nominees for 2013's "Bad Sex in Fiction" Award

Although bad writing, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. While some of the excerpts from the nominees for the 2013 Bad Sex in Fiction award** were pretty painful to read, others struck me as merely straightforwardly descriptive, rather than badly written. Could the Bad Sex award be as much about discouraging any literary writing about sex as it is about discouraging the "badly written," or the "redundant"? At least in effect, if not in intention?

And just what's at stake when our purportedly "best" writers are uninterested in, afraid to, or simply refuse to, take on the challenge of writing about sex?

"The most difficult scene to write in a story or novel is the one in which your characters get it on. At least, that's way my fiction-writing friends have always said," Fennelly notes in the opening of her article (23). Would Fennelly's friends feel the same way, I wonder, if a few romance writers were part of their crowd?


If you were a judge in a "Best Sex in Romance" contest, to what author, and/or to what book, would you give the award? And why?



Thanks, A & AM. You may not have helped my fiction-writing, but you've given me great food for blogging thought!


* I was hoping to include a picture of the actual award, described in this BBC article as "a semi-abstract statue representing sex in the 1950s, by interior designer and socialite Nicky Haslam," but a Google image search came up with nothing. Even more strange, the web site of the Literary Review includes no mention of the award. 

** Interestingly, two of the nominees for the Bad Sex 2013 award were also finalists on the Bi Writers Association "Bisexual Book Awards" list. Significant, do you think?

The Lopsided RITA nominations

Last week, the Romance Writers of America announced the finalists for their annual RITA awards, given to "promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas." RWA's Board had recently made substantial changes to the rules governing the judging of the contest, aimed both at "increas[ing] both awareness and prestige of the award" and "to ensure that books receiving a romance award are romance novels/novellas," according to a FAQ sheet about the 2014 award process created by RWA. The changes included shifting from a single 1 to 9 point scale to awarding points in four categories: 1-10 for the Plot; 1-10 for the Writing; 1-20 for the Characters; and 1-20 for the Romance. It also included changing several of the sub-genres in which authors could enter their books, including the elimination of the "mainstream novel with strong romantic elements" category. And instead of choosing books that receive scores in the top 10% of their sub-genre category as finalists, any book that received at least 90% of the total possible score (45 points or higher) would be awarded finalist status.

Many romance writers and readers (including myself) were more than a little curious to see if and how the changes would affect the makeup of the finalist slates. Curiosity quickly turned to frustration, and then to calls for change, though, after RWA members discovered just out unbalanced the 2014 RITA list turned out to be. In recent years, about 8 finalists in each sub-category had been named. In contrast, this year's list included categories with as few as 2 finalists (Inspirational Romance), and others with as many as 18 (Contemporary Romance). And some categories had disappeared completely, because not enough entries had been submitted (although the cap on the total number of books that the contest would accept may have played a role here).

Romance writers' discussion boards and e-mail loops lit up with protests in response to the perceived flaws in the new judging system. Many writers posted letters they planned to send to the RWA Board, pointing to the failures in the current system and calling for reforms. And I know of at least one RWA-affiliated chapter (The Mystery/Suspense chapter, better known as The Kiss of Death chapter) that has begun an online petition calling for the old judging criteria to be reinstated. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that others are considering this option, as well.

I'm not certain when RWA posted their "FAQ" sheet, but from its wording, it seems to have appeared after the announcements, suggesting that the organization was both taken by surprise by the results and was aware that they would likely prove controversial among its general membership. The FAQ concludes with this question (and its rather noncommittal answer):

Will RWA revisit the rules or provide better guidelines or training for judges?

The Board understands that the RITA Award is important to members and therefore commits significant resources each and every year to improving the outcome. The Board also considers whether guidelines for judging would be necessary or helpful.

Contest rules are approved at the July board meeting.


When RWA explained that the rule changes were aimed at meeting its strategic goal of increasing the prestige and public awareness of the RITA award, I guessing that this current brouhaha was not quite what they had in mind...

What are your thoughts on the 2014 RITA finalist list? And what do you think can/should be done to increase the prestige and the public awareness of the award?

Spotlight on the Lambda Nominees: Karin Kallmaker's LOVE BY THE NUMBERS

'Tis the season for literary awards to announce their nominee lists. As I mentioned in this post, the Nebula list, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) came out late last month; in early March, the Lambda Literary Foundation announced its nominees for the 2014 Lambda awards, prizes awarded to "the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books in their year of publication." The Nebula Award honors fantasy and science fiction in general (best novel, novella, novelette, etc.), with no sub-category for SF or Fantasy romance. But the Lambda Literary Awards give awards to both the best "gay romance" and the best "lesbian romance," defined as books that "feature a prominent lesbian/gay character or contain content of strong significance to lesbian/gay lives" and that "focus on a central love relationship between two or more characters." Gay and lesbian romances may fall into any one of the many sub-genres of romance, including "traditional, historical, gothic, Regency, and paranormal romance," according to the LLA web site.

M/m romance, and, to a lesser extent, gay romance, have become widely popular amongst general romance readers. But lesbian romance has not received the same level of attention, or interest. Given my own lack of knowledge of this area of the field, I decided to read all of this year's Lambda nominees for best lesbian romance, and to report on my reactions to them here on RNFF.

The first thing of interest to me as I begin this project is how few of the Lambda-nominated titles were available through my local library network. Massachusetts' Minuteman Library Network (MLN) is a consortium of 43 libraries, with 62 locations, including 36 public and 7 college libraries. Through the MLN network, I was able to interlibrary loan most of the books from the Nebula list that included a romance storyline. But access to the Lambda titles was far more limited. The week after the awards were announced, only one of the Lambda nominees for gay romance could be ordered, and none of the lesbian romances. Is this due to a lack of respect for gay literature? Or for romance? Given Massachusetts' liberal reputation, particularly in regards to gay rights, this lack of gay romance titles in the MLN system is more than a little surprising.

The second thing I noticed was that most of the Lambda award lists included books from multiple publishers. For example, 10 books nominated for Best Gay Romance were published by 8 different publishers (with Riptide Publishing garnering 3 of the 10). In contrast, the lesbian romance list was dominated by only two publishers: Bold Strokes Books and Bella Books, with 4 titles each (Phoenix Rising Press and Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company/Nuance rounded out the field). I'm curious, now, wondering about the percentage of publishers putting out lesbian romance books compared to gay and m/m romances, and the percentage of lesbian romance books published each year compared to gay and m/m romances. Tried to do a quick Google search to find figures, but didn't have much success. Any readers out there who might point me in the right direction?

Finally, my thoughts on the first title to arrive in my mailbox: Karin Kallmaker's Love by the Numbers. A seasoned romance and fantasy-science fiction writer, Kallmaker was awarded the 2011 Trailblazer Award by the Golden Crown Literary Society, "a literary and educational organization for the study, discussion, enjoyment, and enhancement of lesbian literature." Kallmaker's latest romance focuses on the "hate at first sight" relationship between a dour scientist and a woman hiding from her parents' criminal past.

The irony of Nicole Hathaway's academic tract on DNA and sexual attraction going viral is not lost on the less-than-personable professor. Nicole has cultivated a reputation as difficult and humorless, not only to protect herself against the unthinking sexism and racism a female scientist of Indian descent faces every day in the American college environment, but also to keep her private sexual preferences hidden from colleagues and family alike. The only thing that Nicole is looking forward to about the book tour her publisher is bent on sending her on is being able to hit the lesbian clubs and bars without fear of her alter ego, leather-wearing Cole, being outed. But when her publisher assigns the younger, gorgeous, and presumably straight Lily Smith to be her assistant on the tour, Nicole finds herself growing increasingly attracted to the woman who seems her opposite in every regard. Will she be able to survive the grueling book tour without allowing Lily to catch sight of Cole?

Unlike many of the m/m romances I've read, I really got a sense of a wider gay culture from reading Kallmaker's romance. Though Nicole remains closeted through much of the book, and Lily keeps her sexual preferences private from her boss, both women participate in the larger world of lesbian life, going to lesbian bars, attending a women's music festival, and picking up on sexual signals from other lesbians they encounter during their multi-country tour. Even while the one-to-one relationship between the two women develops, Kallmaker's book clearly acknowledges, and is embedded in, a larger, sexuality-specific culture.

Unlike most mainstream heterosexual romances, Kallmaker's story offers more in the way of intellectual than emotional pleasures. This may be due in part to Nicole's scientific personality; for example, when Lily says, "You don't feel that a person's race has bearing on whether they can have successful relationships." Nicole replies, "My feelings are irrelevant.... The data plainly says that race is not a factor" (91). Nicole often stops to analyze her own physical reactions, or the reactions of others, to help her contain her own feelings, a personality tick that also distances readers from her: "The pleasure of looking at Lily had her dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin spiraling upward" (189). Nicole is so emotionally closed-off, it made me wonder if Kallmaker intended for us to see her as on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum (as Lily notes about some of her own former professors, "brilliant and utterly without social graces....Their neurons fired a little bit differently than most people's and their empathy was sometimes on a time delay. There, but slow to surface" [19]). Her distancing didn't seem a cultural thing, as both her mother and her half-sister were far more emotionally expressive.

The emotional pleasure also seems understated in large part because throughout most of the novel, neither Nicole nor Lily is aware that the other is attracted to her, or even that the other shares her sexual orientation: "There was nothing about Lily Smith that pinged her gaydar, and Nicole felt that hers was exceptionally accurate. She had made a study of the cues and signs of other lesbians to avoid giving out any of her own" (26). We read of Lily's growing desire for Nicole, and Cole's for Lily, but we get little of the mutual sexual attraction that for one reason or another must be denied/repressed, the mutuality and the repression that provides much of the emotional zing in traditional heterosexual romance. And when the sexy times finally do commence between Lily and Nicole, they are brief and interrupted by family problems the very next morning.

The intellectual pleasures, though, are many. We hear pieces of the presentations that Nicole gives during her many book tour stops, presentations that lead readers to question certain givens most people have about the way romantic love works. For example, when trying to get Nicole to give more thought to how to engage her popular, rather than academic, audiences, Lily notes:

"You found that people in interracial relationships were no more or less likely to succeed—be happy— than people who weren't. So when I read that case study what I took from it is that if I am looking to find a mate, there is no reason to narrow the field because I think I might be happier with someone of the same skin color or racial background... If I'm a woman looking to find a life mate, my possible pool just increaesd multifold. And that gives me hope. It says that it's actually a good idea to look outside my usual paths of life. Go further afield. Open my eyes to parts of the world I'd ignored" (91).

And later, during one of her book talks, Nicole tells us,

"Contrary to romantic comedies, the sexual spark isn't a reliable predictor of long-term success. Every participant in our study had felt it with both positive and negative outcomes. More than half said that while sex was important, it was not the deciding factor in the decision to make a long-term commitment" (108).

And

"So if sexual attraction isn't a good predictor of long-term relationship success, what are some of the things that are? One of the most commonly cited personality traits that participants said they shared with their long-term partner was a self-described 'good' sense of humor. That doesn't mean laughter, however. The predictor isn't that both people can laugh, but that they laugh—or cry, or get angry—at the same things. Their emotional responses to the same stimuli—a pie in the face, the loss of a parent, a national tragedy—are similar" (108)

Info-geek that I am, I wish that Kallmaker had included a note citing her real-life sources for Nicole's research findings; I wanted to track down and read the actual studies.

But if much of Love by the Numbers is more cerebral than emotional, its ending is filled with all the love declarations and love-proving gestures that fans of romance crave. I'm looking forward to reading some of Kallmaker's other work, and discovering if the balance between intellectual and emotional pleasures plays out in similar, or different, ways than it does in this Lambda-nominated title.


Photo credits:
Minuteman Library: Somerville Public Library
Golden Crown Logo: Golden Crown Literary Society
Laughing: Nurse Uncut

Karin Kallmaker

Love by the Numbers

Bella Books, 2013

Let Your Voice Be Heard

On this chilly winter Friday (at least here in the northern United States), a miscellany of links to other blog posts on the the topic of letting your voice be heard:

First, from the Wonk-o-Mance web site, a post from romance author Ruthie Knox about editorial policing and author self-policing in the romance field. And this follow-up post from reader/reviewer Willaful on the Dear Author site, approaching the issue from a reader's point of view. Not only the posts, but the many informed comments, are well-worth reading if you're interested in the topic of voice.

Unpublished romance authors often turned to local RWA chapter contests to get their voices heard. But this year has seen a marked decrease in contest submissions, chapter leaders around the country have reported on the RWA Chapter Leadership loop (of which I am a member, as Treasurer of the New England Chapter of RWA). In response, Tori McAllister, Secretary of the Pocono-Lehigh Romance Writers, blogged here about possible reasons for the decline, and ways local RWA chapters might respond. If you're a romance author, or an aspiring author, what kind of contests would you like to see RWA chapters run?


Winning a major award is a great way for authors to get their voices heard by a broader audience. Though RWA's RITA award winners won't be revealed until this summer, the American Library Association announced its annual awards this past Wednesday, including the Reference and User Services Association's Reading List, which "seeks to highlight outstanding genre fiction that merit special attention by general adult readers and the librarians who work with them." Tessa Dare's Any Duchess Will Do was given top honors in the romance category, with four additional books placed on the short list:

Autumn Bride by Anne Gracie
The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan (about which I posted about here)
One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Interesting that librarians seem to prefer historicals (four out of the five titles selected), at least for adult readers. How many of these have you read? How many of them would you regard as feminist?

Children's and YA librarians also announced their Youth Media Awards this week. The Michael L. Printz Award, for novels written for young adults, included two books with romance at their heart: Honor Book Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, and Printz Award-winner Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick (loved the first, and am eagerly looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of the second). Still waiting for the Best of the Best YA list to be posted on the YALSA web site, to see if librarians favored any other YA romances...

Finally, a question: did you vote in the All About Romance's Annual Reader's poll this year? Do you think it's important for readers to make their voices heard via such polls? Or do think polls are irrelevant in a field where sales figures often dictate what gets published and what doesn't?




Photo credits:
Enter to Win: The Romantic Editor
Printz Award seal: American Library Association

Printzs and RITAs and boys, oh my! part 2

"The Michael L. Printz Award annually honors the best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit." — Young Adult Library Services web site

"The purpose of the RITA contest is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding romance novels." — Romance Writers of America web site

In a post I wrote back in February, I discussed the conference proposal I had submitted to this year's Children's Literature Association conference, a proposal focusing on constructions of masculinity in young adult novels honored by the American Library Association and by the Romance Writers of America. The proposal has since been accepted, and with last week's announcement of the RITA award finalists, I finally have a complete list of books to read and analyze.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the RWA's RITA list and ALA's Printz/Best of the Best list do not share a single title. Comparing how the books that each association deems its "best" depict romantic heroes should reveal interesting differences.

This year's YA RITA finalist list contained only four titles: 

Bound, Erica O'Rourke (Kensington/KTeen)

The Farm, Emily Mckay (Penguin/Berkely)

Grave Mercy, Robin LaFevers (Houghton)

Pushing the Limits, Katie McGary (Harlequin Teen)

Huntley Fitzpatrick's My Life Next Door (Penguin/Dial) made the "Best First Book" list, so I may add it to the mix.

I haven't read any of these books yet; anyone out there have thoughts about the type(s) of masculinity they depict/construct?

I've read through a few of the Printz/Best Books titles that could be construed as romances, or at least as "novels with strong romantic elements": Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Boys, David Levithan's Every Day, and Terry Pratchett's Dodger. Still on the TBR pile: Benjamin Alire Sáenz's Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of Universe and Alethea Kontis' Enchanted.

What the ALA/Printz/Best Books titles I've read so far seem to have in common is their insistence that there is not just one romantic masculinity; instead, each book insists upon the existence of multiple masculinities. Raven Boys includes a clear romantic female lead, but with its cast of four boys, all of them very different one from the other, we're not sure which will turn out to be the romantic lead (RB is the first book in a series). The situation in Levithan's Every Day is even more complex; A, the book's narrator, wakes up in a different body each morning, and neither readers nor narrator know what sex A is. Levithan toys with what a genderless identity might be like, even while depicting many different types of young men in the bodies that A temporarily inhabits over the course of several months. Pratchett's Dodger discovers, as Pratchett heroes and heroines are wont to do, that the most successful person, male or female, is the one who can shape his or her own identity by constructing the most persuasive stories, instead of allowing others, or society, to tell one what one's identity should be.

Will the RITA books be as expansive in their visions of masculinity? Or will their romantic heroes have more in common with each other than the Printz/Best Books titles do? I'm looking forward to finding out...

In other news, yours truly was interviewed for an article that appeared on the Atlantic's "Sexes" blog, "Beyond Bodice-Rippers: How Romance Novels Came to Embrace Feminism," and also for a brief radio piece on KIRO Radio, "Glistening Abs with a Feminist Twist: Introducing Feminist Romance Novels." The resulting conversations have been fascinating, especially this one on author Cecilia Grant's blog. Hope you can join in...

Next time on RNFF:

Confronting the intersections of sexism and social class in Kristan Higgins' My One and Only

Printzs and RITAs and boys, oh my!: Constructions of masculinity in award-winning YA romance

The Michael L. Printz Award annually honors the best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit" —Young Adult Library Services Association web site

The purpose of the RITA contest is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels." — Romance Writers of America web site


This week, the American Library Association announced the winners of its major annual children's and young adult book awards. Among those awards is the Michael L. Printz Award for Young Adult Literature, and its affiliated lists, the "Best Fiction for Young Adults" and "Best of the Best" lists (named the "Best Books for Young Adults" list until 2011). Librarians, booksellers, and especially publisher across the country wait with bated breath for the announcement of said awards. Winning guarantees not only a big increase in a book's sales, as schools, libraries, and booksellers rush to stock titles with YALSA's stamp of approval, but a welcome addition of prestige.

Criteria for the selection of literary prizes such as the Printz typically assert that their award's goal is to promote "excellence" or "merit." But as Kenneth Kidd points out in his essay "Prizing Children's Literature: The Case of Newbery Gold,"* examining the history of such prizes often reveals as much about a particular organization's identity and ideological leanings as it does about what constitutes an abstract, or absolute, vision of literary merit. Comparing the prizes awarded by different organizations to the same category or genre of books, then, should reveal important differences (and perhaps surprising similarities) between said organizations.

So, for a talk I hope to be giving at this year's Children's Literature Association conference, I've decided to read the books nominated for a RITA award for Best Young Adult Romance of the year by the Romance Writers of America, and compare them to those books with romances or strong romantic elements awarded a Printz, or named to the "Best Fiction for Young Adults" or the "Best of the Best" list.

In particular, I'm going to look at how these books depict masculinity. What does mean to be a teen hero? What types of boyhoods/male adolescences do librarians hold up as worth emulation? Are they different from the types of masculinities valued by romance writers? If so, how? And are there any similarities?

The Printz list this year, alas, looks a bit short on romance:

Winner:
     In Darkness by Nick Lake (Bloomsbury)

 Honor Books:
     Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Simon & Schuster)
     Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Hyperion)
     Dodger by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins)
     The White Bicycle by Beverly Brenna (Red Deer Press)


So I may have to delve into YALSA's "Best of the Best 2013" list for more relevant titles (Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Boys? Alethea Kontis' Enchanted? David Levithan's Every Day?)


Anyone interested in joining me on this reading odyssey? I'll be posting intermittently between now and June about these books, letting you know what I've discovered, and would love to hear your thoughts, either in response to mine or in response to your own reading of the book(s). All contributors will be given due credit (and thanked profusely) in any presentation I make :-).


* Kenneth Kidd, "Prizing Children's Literature: The Case of Newbery Gold." Children's Literature 35 (2007) : 166-90.


Photo/Illustration credits:
• Printz Award: YALSA
• RITA statue: RWA

Next time on RNFF:

Sexuality, the Gothic, and romantic suspense: Robin Schone's The Lover