The Romance Writers of America, the major trade association for romance authors, revealed in recent weeks that it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection — even though romance publishing remains a billion-dollar industry and romance is still the highest-earning fiction genre. Sales of romance novels have continued to climb in recent years even while overall book sales have declined.
Yet more than 40 years since its founding, the Romance Writers of America is floundering, largely in part because of years of controversy surrounding race and inclusion.
The RWA’s troubled history mirrors the race issues that have permeated the romance genre overall, with many Black authors saying they are rarely supported by the industry or are shut out of it altogether. Former members said they are not surprised that the organization filed for bankruptcy protection, citing a drastic decline in membership, money woes and diversity problems.
The bankruptcy filing is the RWA’s “best opportunity to survive and to continue to try to do the work of learning to be more inclusive,” said LaQuette, an author (using a pen name) who was a director at large of the RWA and later its interim president in 2020.
The organization has lost 80% of its membership in the last five years, according to The Associated Press. With just 2,000 members left, it cannot afford to cover nearly $3 million owed to hotels where it planned to hold its conferences. All this after years of allegations of racism and internal friction sent members fleeing by the thousands.
Mary Ann Jock, RWA’s president, attributed recent troubles to “disputes concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion,” The Guardian reported. But looking to the past also offers clues as to how the RWA ended up in the present situation.
The organization was founded by a Black woman, Vivian Stephens
When Vivian Stephens founded the RWA alongside Rita Clay in 1980, she did it with a mission to support romance writers and improve the quality of the books, according to an in-depth 2020 interview Stephens, who usually stays out of the spotlight, gave Texas Monthly.
Stephens was already a force in the publishing industry. She was an editor at Dell Publishing Co., in charge of its Candlelight division for romance books, and she championed titles by writers of color. Her most notable acquisition was 1980’s “Entwined Destinies” by Elsie B. Washington, who wrote under the pen name Rosalind Welles. The book is widely considered to be the country’s first contemporary Black romance novel.
Stephens used her industry connections, knowledge and experience to get the organization off the ground. Her and Clay’s visions for the organization soon began to clash, however. Stephens wanted a writer-focused association, while Clay wanted to invite readers. Former members said socializing became more important than succeeding as writers.
By 1983, many of the organization’s early Black members were leaving, and Stephens did, too.
“They wanted Rita,” she recalled, referring to the increasingly white membership that one member said felt more like a “sorority” than a writers’ association. “I would ask them, ‘Why can’t you be serious?’ I realize now that this group wanted the camaraderie of each other more than they wanted to write. They were so happy to find companionship I just let it go.”
The RWA gets whiter and awards controversial books
Nearly 86% of the RWA’s membership was white by 2018, The New York Times reported. In 2005, the RWA asked members in a poll whether it should define romance as being between one man and one woman, outraging many in the romance community. Nora Roberts, one of the genre’s most famous writers, wrote a letter to the RWA criticizing the move and condemning homophobia.
The RWA formally apologized for the poll in 2016.
It courted controversy again in 2015 when it nominated a book about a Jewish woman in a concentration camp who falls in love with a Nazi for two of its coveted RITA awards, named after Rita Clay. A few years later, in 2019, Kennedy Ryan became the first Black woman awarded a RITA, which only underscored the RWA’s lack of diversity.
The organization was not oblivious to its problems, however. An internal analysis by the RWA revealed in 2018 that Black authors wrote less than half of 1% of the books considered as RITA prize finalists, according to NPR.
“It is impossible to deny that this is a serious issue and that it needs to be addressed,” board members said in a statement on the RWA website at the time. “The RWA Board is committed to serving all of its members. Educating everyone about these statistics is the first step in trying to fix this problem.”
The RWA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A watershed moment leads to a racial reckoning — and a loss in members
Like many controversies in the age of social media, the RWA’s racial reckoning began with a single tweet. Courtney Milan, an author who is Chinese and white, has long advocated for diversity within the RWA, took to Twitter in 2019 to call out stereotypical portrayals of Chinese women in Kathryn Davis’ 1999 novel “Somewhere Lies the Moon.” She called sections of the book a “racist mess” in a now-deleted social media post.
Davis and Suzan Tisdale, a white writer who worked with Davis, filed a complaint against Milan. They accused Milan of “cyberbullying” and said her social media thread cost Davis a publishing contract. In response, the RWA announced in December 2019 that it had suspended Milan’s membership and permanently barred her from holding any leadership position.
Milan said in an email statement to NBC News, “I don’t really have anything to say about RWA at this point except that whatever happens to them, it will continue to happen without me.”
That sparked outrage among the romance writer community and members of the RWA, already disillusioned after decades of controversies and inclusion problems. Milan called the RWA’s decision a “betrayal”; after all, she had been chair of its ethics committee until then.
“RWA is not alone in trying to balance free speech with civil discourse and the damage — personal and financial — its absence can do,” RWA officials said in a statement then, noting that its ethics committee found that Milan violated its mission to foster a “safe and respectful environment.” “It is, however, up to us to find a pathway forward to meet the competing needs of free expression without subjecting our members to harassment, intimidation, and financial loss.”
Romance heavyweights like Roberts and Alyssa Cole rallied behind Milan. Meanwhile, former RWA members began to share their criticisms of the organization. Members began leaving by the thousands. Racheline Maltese, a queer romance writer, was one of them.
“A lot of us are alienated,” said Maltese, who joined the organization in 2013. “There was a culture of silence. It’s such a woman-dominated organization that there was cultural value in ‘be nice, don’t rock the boat, don’t cause controversy.’”
She continued: “When all that went down with Courtney, everybody else started telling stories that they thought were just them that they’d kept to themselves.”
Efforts to chart a better path
The RWA’s leadership resigned in the fallout surrounding Milan. In early 2020, President Damon Suede, a male writer, stepped down along with Executive Director Carol Ritter and the board of directors. The RWA canceled the RITA Awards that year. In a statement, the RWA called the recent dissension “painful and tumultuous,” admitted the RWA’s “significant failures” regarding diversity, equity and inclusion, and vowed to do better.
The RWA laid out a series of steps, including hiring a DEI consultant, hiring an independent law firm to review the 2019 controversy and looking into revamping its awards program. That’s when LaQuette joined the RWA leadership as director at large. She, along with the existing leadership, hoped to address the RWA’s checkered past and chart a better path, she said.
It was LaQuette’s idea to retire the RITA Awards and debut the VIVIAN Awards in honor of Stephens in 2020, nearly 40 years after she was pushed out of the organization.
“It did not sit well with me that all the contributions that this Black woman made to both the industry and the organization were not being recognized,” she said.
Still, missteps continued. In 2021, the RWA rescinded a VIVIAN Award given to a Christian romance novel about a cavalry officer who killed Lakota people during the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee.
Awarding the book seemed to be the nail in the coffin for an organization already on life support. Now, LaQuette said, she believes the bankruptcy filing could be beneficial.
“The RWA cannot outrun its horrible history,” she said.
“The RWA should be given the opportunity to make steps toward becoming more inclusive,” she added. “It can’t undo or make amends, but they can create a path forward that is more welcoming and more supportive of all of its members.”
For more from NBC BLK, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
