I found this article because I wanted to read romance novels again. I decided to check out the Romance Writers of America website. I noted several announcements in their news section that started to ping my kerfuffle-dar: they’re hiring a DEI consultant (which honestly would be a great idea for most organizations but based on my observations, organizations only do this after an incident), there have been changes in their board membership, special statements from award nominees withdrawing themselves from consideration… So I decided to hunt down the origin of it all and found this handy summary. That summary pointed me to this article, which I found especially interesting because a lot of it centers on my local RWA chapter, which I have been adjacent to in a couple of ways, though never a member.
It’s a great piece because it illuminates the way institutional racism touches an industry, how people can do antiracist work in their own area of expertise, and also serves as a list of authors to check out and books to read.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go track down some books about BIPOC & LGBTQ people that definitely have happy endings. And then I’m going to read them.