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oh my god, it's a livejournal post dreamwidth post, I know, I don't believe it either. But I felt like returning to my roots to provide an overview for anybody who's wondering 1) what's up with the RWA, and 2) what they've missed over the holidays, because the updates have flown fast and furious, and it's really easy to have missed something important.

The tl;dr: The RWA (Romance Writers of America) has completely imploded in a matter of days, multiple longstanding pressure points are combusting at once, mass resignations have ensued, including the org president, and the future of the org is in jeopardy. Claire Ryan has a very good, concise chronological timeline of the whole mess.

There are already plans afoot to create a new and better professional romance organization — one with inclusivity in its mission statement, a commitment to diversity, transparency, and openness, and a modernized understanding of the romance sphere and its overlap with everything from podcasting to fanfiction. It's called the Romance Alliance. Please join us!

Or, if you'd rather, the president of the SFWA invites you to consider joining the SFWA instead, like the classy human she is. <3

This report is long and detailed and late and on fucking livejournal dreamwidth, but it was important for me to do it, and I think that's because this event looks, from here, like one of those watershed moments that will have a wide-ranging spillover effect across all parts of the publishing and genre fiction communities, much as Racefail did 10 years ago. I'm going to set down all the info and updates I have, as concisely but thoroughly as I can. feel free to comment (I know some of you still remember how to comment) with more info as you run across it.

Just joining us? Here's the basic recap.

On December 23, the RWA suspended author Courtney Milan. They also issued a lifetime ban preventing Milan from ever serving in a position of leadership in the organization again.

This is a big deal. Courtney Milan served on the RWA board for four years, and even won an RWA service award for her leadership promoting diversity in the RWA. She's renowned for her work in this arena, and until this happened she was chairing the RWA ethics committee.

The RWA banned/suspended Milan after an ethics complaint was filed against her which alleged that Milan, an author of color, was being racist towards several white women because she had used social media to critique their professional and public behavior, and had additionally called out racist stereotypes in one of their books. One of the complaints against Milan insisted that Milan has too much power in the romance community, and compared her to "a neo-Nazi in charge of a UN human rights committee."

Because Milan was chairing the ethics committee at the time, the RWA's executive committee — that's the president, president-elect, secretary, and treasurer — decided to form a new, secret committee, completely behind the actual ethics committee's back, to adjudicate the case. They did this without ever telling the actual ethics committee what was going on. They then misrepresented this decision of the secret committee as being the decision of the actual ethics committee, a move that prompted several members of the real ethics committee to speak out and/or resign.

The timing of Milan's ban came the day before Christmas Eve, as the board attempted (and failed) to take a three-day holiday. It also came the day of the deadline for RITA submissions, meaning no one could withdraw from entering RITA contests — or get their money back.

The decision to ban Milan prompted intense and widespread backlash, and the hashtag IStandWithCourtney was a top Twitter trend throughout most of the day on Christmas Eve. The outrage prompted mass membership walkouts and staff resignations, as well as calls for an org-wide investigation and the creation of a new alternative association altogether.

On December 24, the RWA retracted its decision:

On Dec. 26, the RWA board issued an open letter to RWA members in which it announced that nine board members, including the RWA president, Carolyn Jewel, had resigned their positions, and that president-elect Damon Suede would be the new president moving forward. The letter admits that "the organization is at a turning point: "We have lost the trust of our membership and the romance community and we must find a way to rebuild that."

This letter has pleased very few people and resignations and walkouts are ongoing. As of late November, the RWA board had 4 officers, 12 directors, 3 (uninvolved) advisors, and a partridge in a pear tree. As of Dec. 28, the president-elect is now the president, there is no president-elect, there are only 3 directors left, the advisors are still uninvolved, and the partridge has crapped on the tree and GTFO'd.

And on top of allllll this, now there's an impending vote to recall the new president, Damon Suede, after questions arose on social media regarding his ethics and general fitness for the office. (Update: If you're an RWA member wanting to recall Suede, it's important that you Sign and signal-boost this new petition.)

On December 30, the RWA released a new open letter (yes, we're up to 3 now), apparently written by Suede, that's breathtaking in its defensive, shaming, and condescending tone. The letter falsely claims Courtney Milan broke confidentiality rules by spreading details of her suspension online, and chides members for being "inappropriate." It ends by noting, "As writers we know more than most, words have consequences." It makes no apology to Milan or to the dozens of writers who've spoken up over the last few days about the organization's institutional racism. 🙃

The backstory

(Disclaimer: Like everyone else i've picked most of this up in the last few days, so if i'm missing any crucial context anywhere, please comment and let me know! Also, a lot of the early backstory has been compiled in more detail by Laura Vivanco.)

The broader backstory to all of this is that the RWA, despite being founded by a black woman, editor Vivian Stephens, has long had a history of problems re: race and diversity. Like, for instance, the year (2015) when two RITA nominations went to... a concentration-camp romance between a Jewish woman and a Nazi official. 😱 Or whatever the fuck they were smoking at the 2005 RITAs.  Or earlier in 2019, when writer Cherry Adair used the occasion of being awarded a Lifetime Achievement award by the organization to dismiss calls for diversity. The RWA rescinded her award.

In 2018, the organization released an internal study disclosing that the number of black romance writers who'd been RITA finalists since 2000 was less than half of one percent of the total number of finalists. In the middle of all this, authors like Milan have been loud and vocal proponents for a more diverse and inclusive organization.

Enter Sue Grimshaw. Sue Grimshaw is an editor who used to be a book buyer for Borders. In 2008, Grimshaw was awarded the RWA's Vivian Stephens award for industry service, prompting many black authors to point out the irony that in fact Grimshaw had facilitated Borders' controversial policy of segregating black romance authors out of the romance genre and into an "African-American fiction" section. (We would later learn about even more facilitation of racism by Grimshaw in years past.

This past history informs what happened in August 2019 when Grimshaw came in for swift critical backlash because another RWA member noticed her penchant for liking several racist political tweets. These included one tweet claiming that white supremacy is a myth created by liberal democrats, and one tweet celebrating a major ICE roundup.

The very first person to notice that Grimshaw had liked these tweets and to speak out about this implied racism publicly was Carolyn Jewel — the woman who up until this week was president of the RWA.

Please keep in mind, as you proceed through what happened next, that all of this was kicked off, not by Courtney Milan, but by the president of the RWA tweeting about blocking an editor for their seemingly racist social media behavior. The president of the organization that would subsequently ban Milan from leadership  had already blocked this woman on Twitter for being racist. As far as I can tell, that fact didn't enter into the later decision-making.

Numerous people, including Milan, noticed Jewel's tweet and began to call out Grimshaw. Enter Suzan Tisdale, the CEO of Glenfinnan, the indie romance press where Grimshaw works as an editor. Suzan Tisdale made a livestreamed video in which she defended Grimshaw but came across as deeply offensive. As Laura Vivanco transcribed, Tisdale minimized both the backlash against Grimshaw and the kinds of tweets she was favoriting, stating "I just don't understand how liking a tweet by two African American women who were discussing white supremacy makes anyone a racist," and then adding that she herself had also liked tweets and videos by the conservative pundits in question. (Again, this was a tweet dismissing the entire existence of white supremacy.)

Once Tisdale made this video, criticism befell her as well, from Vivanco and others, including Milan.

In the ensuing conversation, Milan asked Tisdale if her publishing press had ever published a book by an author of color. Tisdale replied, "None. As far as I know none have submitted to us."

All of the Twitter interactions between Tisdale and Milan are summed up in both Tisdale's eventual complaint (Part 1) (Part 2) and Milan's response. (Milan's response makes the Twitter chronology much easier to follow.) Milan's commentary about this on Twitter was typical, and relatively benign — entirely in the realm of general public criticism, certainly nothing that would qualify as targeted harassment.

But another side to the backlash against Tisdale emerged, and this part roped in Tisdale's other Glenfinnan editor, Kathryn Lynn Davis. Amid the discussion of Tisdale's business practices, another author noticed that Davis's 1999 book Somewhere Lies the Moon was rife with issues regarding its presentation of historical China and Chinese culture. Milan noticed and, without being aware initially that Davis was affiliated with Glenfinnan, tweeted about the book at length, including callouts of specific passages in the book. Take, for example, this passage in which Chinese women are stereotyped as "demure and quiet," "modest and submissive," with "eyes lowered politely, ... fixed on the tea tray or her hands n her lap or her embroidery" 😬:

At the end of August, Tisdale and Davis both filed joint complaints against Milan.

The complaints

Tisdale's complaint accused Milan of "blatant ethics violations" and bullying.

"My publishing house would never turn away an author simply because of the color of their skin," Tisdale wrote. "But due to Ms. Milan’s twitter attacks, people are accusing me of doing just that." Tisdale also alleged that as a result of Milan's "bullying," specifically, Grimshaw had lost employment with a publishing house which was allegedly afraid of pissing off Milan and her followers. Tisdale also claimed that she herself had lost business with three authors who were also afraid of Milan. Milan's stint as head of the RWA ethics committee, she argued, was "akin to putting a neo-Nazi in charge of a UN human rights committee ... Ms. Milan is not what the face of RWA needs to be."

In response to Tisdale, Milan argued that "Tisdale does not assert any conduct which is in violation of the Code of Ethics ... The tweets she highlights are a discussion of business practices."

Davis's complaint alleged that Milan's "cyberbullying" had cost her a three-book contract with a publishing company. I honestly have a lot of sympathy for Davis here: it's got to be unbelievably rough to be minding your own business, and suddenly you're losing work and getting flamed because the internet found a super-stereotyped book you wrote 20 years ago. And Davis seems to be absolutely clueless about why her book is causing any alarm; she comes across as one of those people who's not getting it at all, and she seems completely confused about why any of this is happening to her. In fact, in the middle of her complaint, she mistakes Milan's sarcastic dismissal of one of her racist tropes as a straightforward confirmation of the racist trope. Just, she clearly has no clue at all.

But then she says stuff like this, and the sympathy fades very quickly: "The book to which she refers, and which she trashes in an unprofessional way, was written in the 1990s and is historically accurate, which makes it both immune from and irrelevant to current judgments of racist literature." Yeah, no, wtf: Historical records are never static; they're perpetually in flux, depending on the eyewitness, the historian, and the culture in which they're received. If the 1619 Project has taught us anything, it's that even the most well-researched historical arguments spark heated debate, especially today. Davis claims a Master's degree in history, so this disavowal of responsibility for the evolving role her depiction of history plays in a changing culture is, at the very least, very baffling.

Then there's the part where she tries to insist to Milan that the racism in the book is okay. As Milan later put it, "I paraphrase: My book isn’t racist; if she had kept reading, she would see that I used the “blue-eyed” thing to show that being half-Chinese is like a curse, but I meant the white half.  What a thing to say to a half-Chinese person." Oh, and THEN she went and liked a bizarre Facebook comment implying that Milan is using the same tactics that China used to conquer Tibet, okay, fuck this lady. As a fun (not-fun) bonus, after this mess all broke, Native-American author and educator Dr. Debbie Reese examined another one of Davis's books, Sing to Me of Dreams, and highlighted its offensive treatment of Native Americans.

Defending her treatment of Davis's writing in her response to Tisdale's complaint, Milan said, "I continue to believe the book by Davis was a racist mess ... I have strong feeling about these stereotypes, and when I speak about them, I use strong language. It is hard not to be upset about something that has done me and my loved ones real harm." In her response to Davis's complaint, she adds, "Davis is explicitly asking RWA to create a world in which I, as a woman of color, must be explicitly barred from using my voice to criticize a novel with a protagonist who shares my race, because she believes that she should be 'immune' from criticism of the book."

Because Milan was the ethics committee chair, the RWA board apparently felt that everyone on the ethics committee would be ethically compromised in adjudicating the complaint against her. But instead of getting a third-party to adjudicate, the board assembled a new committee to handle the complaint, reportedly largely in secrecy.

In its report, the secret ethics committee sided with Milan on 3 of the 4 points raised by Tisdale and Davis — yet inexplicably still recommended, by unanimous vote, to ban and suspend Milan. The RWA board then, in two rounds of voting, approved the secret ethics committee's report 10–5 with 1 abstention, and affirmed the secret committee's recommendation for disciplining Milan, 12–2 with 2 abstentions.

The explosion

The world found out about all of this on December 23, when RWA author Alyssa Cole posted the news on Milan's behalf:

cheshyre

At first as the clamor over this grew, the RWA reacted defensively, reportedly deleting discussion threads about the decision on its private forums. Meanwhile, news about how shady the internal process was came to light, as horrified members of the (real) ethics committee began to speak out.

Grant's tweet was quickly corroborated by Ruby Lang and Mia Soso, both former members of the (real) ethics committee who had since resigned.

The board issued a statement regarding the committee formation and voting process surrounding Milan's complaint, but it raises a lot more questions than answers. For instance, it doesn't explain, well, anything. It doesn't explain why Milan was disciplined at all when the committee ruled in her favor on 3 of the 4 points at issue. It doesn't explain why the (secret) ethics committee sided with the complainant on the fourth point — that Milan was a bully on social media, basically — when that argument actually contradicts the social media exemption written into the RWA code of conduct.

And it certainly doesn't explain why Milan received such unusually harsh discipline. Former RWA president Leslie Kelly has a great discussion on Twitter that helps clarify a lot about the process, while also making it clear just how absurd and bizarre this whole situation was from start to finish. Under her tenure, she notes, "This was the kind of issue that, at most, would have possibly merited a warning letter. But a year’s suspension? Never again serving as an officer? That sounds like something you would deem suitable for somebody who defrauded a chapter, stole money, lied, plagiarized.  NOT somebody who simply pointed out racism where it deserved to be pointed out."

Even more confusing: RWA members who emailed the organization to complain about the decision received a form letter which implied that the (secret) ethics committee had acted on more information concerning Milan than had been made public — information Milan apparently never had a chance to learn about or respond to. ??????????

Dance Break: Nicknames for Damon Suede

(Trust me, you'll need these soon enough)

• Omen Patent Leather (x)


• Nomad Velour (x)


• Dicky Velveteen


• 21 Tracksuit


• Demon Goatskin


• Danny Slippers


• Dragon Pleather


• Daemon Suede


• Damansplainer

The Backpedaling

Over the next few days, RWA members and staffers started resigning en masse, circulating petitions of protests, and urging one another to email the board. On December 24, the board held its emergency session and then abruptly retracted Milan's suspension, but that did nothing to stop the outrage. On December 26, the board tried again, with the longer open letter expressing contrition. The letter announced that RWA president Carolyn Jewel had resigned and would be succeeded by president-elect Damon Suede.

Again, this second message pleased no one — many people noted that it appeared to be unsigned, wtf?! — and Milan retorted, "This message doesn’t actually contain real content."

The CIMRWA — the Cultural, Interracial, Multicultural Special Interest chapter of RWA — wrote an open letter calling for "the resignation of the president, president-elect, & executive director." (Tweet transcript here) When that didn't work, the CIMRWA began circulating a petition to recall president-elect Suede. By December 27, CIMRWA announced it had accumulated enough votes to institute a recall vote against Damon Suede.

Suede also suggests that "a slate" of new (secret) ethics committee members "was submitted" by some invisible hand as a part of a previously discussed "expansion" that we already know none of the other (real) committee members knew about!

So who submitted the slate, Damon??! If the rest of the board had no part in it, and the ethics committee didn't even know about it, doesn't that pretty much leave... just you?

UPDATE I WAS FUCKING RIGHT ABOUT THIS! Thanks to the collective work of book reviewer She Read, He Said, Claire Ryan again for adding details about the RWA exec committee meetings to her very good timeline, and Leslie Kelly my new fave for explaining what it all meant, we now have a clear picture of what happened, which is that in October, the RWA board drastically amended its rules concerning the Ethics Committee. They specifically:

• Changed the date of committee chair selection from Spring to Fall in order to have an excuse to appoint a new chairman who wasn't Courtney Milan.


• Explicitly changed the rules to give Damon Suede, as President-Elect, the ability to literally hand-pick the new chairman AND to, wait for it, "select and present to the Board for approval a slate of candidates for membership on the committee and appointment to a two-year term"

Milan further alleges that in his chapter memo, Suede is implying he's the one who brought all this mysterious extra evidence to the board. So not only is this guy utterly fucking things up, he's revealing himself to be some sort of embarrassingly mustachioed evil mastermind — he even has a publishing llc called Evil Mastermind, ya'll, I s w e a r.

He also declares that this current state of chaos "is where things stand and where they will remain." In other words, the whole issue is just put to bed and over with. No apology to Milan, no further explanation, nothing.

You might be reading this and thinking, "okay, so everyone's mad at this new Damon Suede guy because he's really incompetent and apparently Machiavellian." But you'd be wrong, because actually, everyone is mad at him for being a major douche.

The Side Issue: Dreamspinner and Damon Suede

Damon Suede is a celebrated queer romance author. He is maybe best known as the author of Hot Head, a book I tried to read once and could not finish bc it was terribly written and dripping with casual misogyny (and apparently racism so vile I blocked it out). So there's that.

Dreamspinner is a small, fandom-adjacent press mainly focused on m/m erotica. For months, writers have been complaining about not getting paid. Rumblings began as early as March 2019. Some authors gave Dreamspinner the benefit of the doubt for running into a number of business problems, but by fall the company's failure to pay owed royalties was attracting significant attention from the publishing world. (You can see the PubLunch article transcript here.)

What it wasn't attracting was much attention from the RWA. The RWA has intervened in similar cases before, but not always; Racheline Maltese noted recently that "When I contacted RWA about non-payment of royalties by Torquere (a now defunct LGBTQ romance publisher), I received no reply." Still, the RWA has done right by authors before. According to a former RWA member I spoke with, when Samhain Publishing announced it was shuttering in 2016, the RWA responded to authors' requests for assistance, consulted a lawyer, and sent out a letter with advice on how authors could get their rights reverted. The member I spoke with was able to follow the RWA lawyer's advice to get their rights reverted in a matter of weeks.

None of that happened here. The RWA did issue a brief statement about Dreamspinner in August, but it reportedly went unpublicized and was difficult to find on the RWA website. In October, the RWA updated its statement to note that Dreamspinner had been placed on indefinite probation as a qualifying market, and would not be reinstated until it had gotten its shit together. But that was pretty much it.

RWA members weren't happy with the organization's lack of advocacy on their behalf. In the wake of the Courtney Milan inferno, writer Adriana Herrera shared an open letter she and other authors had written just weeks before to the RWA, asking the org to help bring pressure to bear on Dreamspinner to pay RWA authors. "For the past six months hundreds of authors, dozens of whom are members of RWA, have not received royalty payments and are feeling increasingly hopeless about the situation improving. Many RWA members have publicly stated they are owed thousands of dollars," the letter noted. But according to Herrera, the RWA responded and said there was nothing the org could do.

This response from the RWA naturally raised questions and eyebrows — especially when someone noticed Dreamspinner claimed to be releasing a book soon by RWA president-elect Damon Suede. The immediate assumption was that Suede was profiting from Dreamspinner at the expense of other authors who were owed $$$, and that his connection with the publishing house had something to do with the RWA not being more vocal about sanctioning the company.

Suede's husband Geoff Symon attempted to explain, in a long convo with Zoe York and her Twitter followers, that Suede reportedly had no idea what book this was, that his latest book wasn't even finished, and he hadn't even been aware that his book was being listed on Amazon until this thread. So at this point, this would all appear to be some giant miscommunication that fell squarely on Dreamspinner, in other words. BUT THEN people started comparing notes on Suede, and when they did, they realized:

This dude apparently just straight-up lies all the time about everybody?!?!?!

• He stole credit (multiple people have attested to this) from an entire editorial staff of women of color in order to falsely claim that he was singlehandedly responsible for adding queer romance to the genres that Romantic Times (RIP) reviewed?!?!?!


• He may or may not have been lying about serving as "the Board Liaison to the Ethics committee"??!? (There's dispute about this — HelenKay Dimon notes that she served in this position for 2 years so it clearly existed at one point.)


• He probably definitely lied in his chapter memo about the ethics committee having high volume and turnover 🤦


• He apparently loves to trash-talk other authors, and alternately scare and flatter them by suggesting to them that X big name author hates them and/or loves them, and is apparently just making all this up at any given moment??????!


• He allegedly spread lies to knock out his competition for president-elect like a more loquacious Tanya Harding??!?!?!?!?!?!?! While using his power to try to pressure at least one RWA chapter into hiring his friends?!?!?!? While throwing other queer writers under the bus by dismissing the queer RWA alliance he co-founded and benefited from? Oh, and allegedly straight-up telling women in panels to talk less, lololol lordamercy.

• And ya'll, I can't even believe I'm about to say this, but one of the people who had to call Damon Suede out for faking insider knowledge about him was my favorite Billings bud who may or may not exist, CHUCK TINGLE, because Suede (typing this out as an actual name gets incrementally ridiculous) claimed in an interview to know the entities behind the Tingle pseudonym — a fact Tingle swiftly repudiated, as only he can.

Oh, and one more lie — the big lie: According to Courtney Milan, in August, Damon Suede insinuated that Dreamspinner was still paying their "moneymakers," i.e. people like him. If true, it would appear to validate the speculation that Suede is responsible for the lack of more aggressive action taken by the RWA against Dreamspinner. (It doesn't help that Suede is off hobnobbing with Dreamspinner's executive editor for the holidays.)

FWIW, Dreamspinner is still avowing a commitment to trying to repay authors and has announced a financial restructuring which it claims will allow steady re-payment through next year. But the point of the criticism is less about Dreamspinner's ongoing financial issues and more about the RWA's failure to keep Suede from profiting from his conflict of interest. As author K.J. Charles put it, "What is not trivial is the President of the RWA feeling quite happy to publically advertise his cosy relationship with the Exec Ed of a consistently non paying publisher, while RWA refuses to take action."

The petition to recall Suede has already been successful, but will remain open through tomorrow night (Dec. 29, 2019).  Reminder: it's only open to RWA members. Meanwhile, some members are reporting that their membership has actually been canceled, allegedly to keep them from supporting the upcoming recall vote against Suede. 🤦

Update:On December 29, CIMRWA tweeted and sent out an urgent email to RWA members who'd signed the recall petition, alleging that the RWA was attempting to stonewall the recall process — apparently with technical b.s. that CIMRWA now has to act quickly to bypass:

It's highly important not to let this whole conversation become about Damon Suede, however, so keep in mind, he's just a side trainwreck of his own. The real focus should remain on the massive outpouring of protest from RWA members over this. Here's a rundown. Again, Claire Ryan has organized much of this much more concisely.

Letters and statements from RWA members:

• On 12/26, 28 RWA chapter presidents and former board members issued an open letter calling for the resignation of board president Carolyn Jewel, Damon Suede, then the board's president-elect, and RWA's executive director Carol Ritter. "We are writing this letter as Members in Good Standing of RWA feeling utterly hopeless for this organization," the letter began. "The last few days have revealed a failure of leadership in RWA that makes us wonder if there is anywhere to go from here."


• Dee Davis: "I am resigning from the original ethics committee and also as the Leadership Development Chairman."


• Tracey Livesay: "Today, I — along w/ multiple former board members — resigned from our positions because we no longer trust or have confidence in RWA’s leadership." Livesay, Seressia Glass, Adrienne Mishel, Priscilla Oliveras, Farrah Rochon, Erica Ridley, and Denny S. Bryce were named as the resigning members.


• "Chanta Rand stepped down from her position as an RWA director-at-large today, after having voted against accepting the Ethics Committee report."


• Kwana Jackson: "2 days ago I resigned fm the orig ethics committee."


• Helen Kay Dimon (former RWA president): "All offers of help rescinded. Resigned as committee chair. Done."


• Also Helen Kay Dimon: "Do better or I’ll start talking about my last day as president, 8/31. The arguments I had. The fight about the improper use of the ethics committee. My concerns about bias. How we veered from our common practices. This disaster could have been avoided."


• The Wisconsin RWA chapter: "WisRWA as a chapter is eminently invested in supporting and promoting authors of color, LGBTQ authors, and authors with disabilities. The RWA board has greatly weakened our position to do so. We respectfully request a full and transparent account of the actions of the ethics committee panel and the RWA Board’s subsequent actions. We ask the Board of Directors to issue a formal and public apology to Courtney Milan."


• Lisa Lin: "In light of the Board's actions, I am pulling out as a RITA judge."


• Melanie C. Duncan: "I emailed my resignation from the RWA RITA awards judging. I was excited to be chosen as a judge, but I can't support them."


• Bria Quinlan: "In light of everything happening in RWA, jeannielin and I have decided to step down as co-chairs of the RWR committee."


• Felicia Grossman: "This morning, I resigned my leadership positions in my local chapter,w/drew my entries&my commitment to judging the RITAs&will allow my RWA membership to lapse. The organization has proven itself inconsistent with my values&benefits me at the expense of others."


• Farah Heron: "After everything that has happened it is hard for me to walk away. I made a commitment to my local members, and I want them to find a place for themselves. That is why I signed this letter. These amazing chapter leaders and I will fight for our communities."


• Romance Sparks Joy posted open letters to the RWA, one on behalf of RWA members, one on behalf of reviewers and librarians judging the RITAs, and one on behalf of readers. The back-ends of each document are available for public viewing so you can see the signees to each. Here's the author list of signees, and here's the reviewer list. The total reviewer letter ended up containing 1300 signatories.


• "Bookstore Romance Day has officially ended its partnership with RWA."


• Headwater Lit: "until further notice, Headwater will not be sending agents to future RWA events."


• Per KT Grant: "Due to the current events surrounding RWA and ApollyCon's commitment to providing a safe and welcoming environment, we have rescinded the invitation for ApollyCon 2020 and 2021 to Damon Suede."


• Chicago North RWA: "Damon Suede will no longer be presenting a master class at Spring Fling 2020. We are both saddened and upset by the events unfolding at RWA national and want our chapter mates and conference attendees to be assured of our commitment to diversity and inclusion."


• Additionally, multiple authors have withdrawn their books from RITA consideration. Here's a whole thread of such authors whose books you can and should support.


• A bunch of you have asked where queen Lisa Kleypas is in all this mess, so just to update, she's right there signing the petition to recall Damon Suede along with everyone else. 🙏


• The RWA's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) advisor has reportedly resigned from the PAN (the RWA's Professional Author Network) in the middle of all of this because "of the lack of support for any DEI programming for PAN ... Despite her recommendations, the PAN board decided not to include any DEI programming for PAN this year, saying it was redundant ... There is only ONE DEI PERSON for the entire organization and the onus of DEI training and implementation has been placed on that person by the board." 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️


• Meanwhile, a few writers have sided with Tisdale and Davis. Cherry Adair—remember her?— has incidentally apparently thrown in her lot with members of the notorious Sad Puppies contingent of reactionary conservative SFF fans. Other RWA chapter leaders have apparently decided to wait until the whole thing "blows over," but I think it's obvious by now that's not going to happen.

Nora Roberts Steps In

Writer, the middle word in Romance Writers of America, is a word without gender, a word without color or race, a word without sexual orientation, without creed. We’re writers, and as such must expect to be treated, must demand to be treated, fairly and equitably by our professional organization ...

RWA gave me a community, and though I have never been active in its leadership (nor did I want to be!) I attended every conference save two for decades ... I didn’t see marginalization–and fully admit I may have been blind to it–until many years in when the leadership crafted a statement defining romance as one man/one woman.

For me anyway, this came out of the blue. Who decided this was our statement? It sure as hell wasn’t mine, and surely we’d all evolved by–what was it–about 2005 ...

A great many members were outraged by it–as they should have been. I certainly was, and took the rare for me step of writing a letter expressing same to the editor of the Romance Writers’ Report. We do NOT discriminate. I would not be a part of this kind of discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Jesus, it’s fine to have a character fall in love with a freaking vampire, but not someone of the same sex? Bullshit. Just bullshit.

Offensive, bigoted, homophobic bullshit.

I received an email from the then president urging me to be quiet, basically, explaining to me–and I am not kidding–I didn’t understand that the lesbians would take over RWA. Jeez, those terrifying lesbians! ... That was a real crack in the wall for me, and left me disappointed and angry with the organization ...

But I thought, I believed, with leadership change, the organization was doing better, trying harder. I didn’t see the marginalization, and I regret that. I could have been a voice, and I wasn’t ...

I regret all the years I didn’t hear, didn’t see, didn’t listen, remained unaware of all the sad and unfair things that are now coming to light.

I hope that light continues to shine, and by doing so may change RWA for the good, may remind those in leadership positions what the purpose was all those years ago. To support and advocate for romance writers. Not specific kinds of romance writers.

Let me add, as a personal note, that over the course of my life, the course of my career, the couple hundred books I’ve written, I may have–most likely have–said or done or written something that was offensive, racist, homophobic. Without intent–but intent doesn’t mean a damn to those hurt. So I’ll apologize without qualification.

I hope I’ve learned along the way. I intend to continue to learn and do better.

Nora

Misc. commentary:

• Smart Bitches (which has a good roundup of the basics): "Is there a bigger word than crushed?"


• The ever-fabulous Mary Robinette Kowal: "As president of SFWA, please accept my invitation to consider our organization if you feel your work has a kinship with SFF, even a tenuous tie."


• Ilona Andrews have a fantastic thread about the RWA as an ecosystem. I want to quote the whole thing, but this especially: "They write what they always write and suddenly their work, which used to meet all the criteria of the popular romance, is being critically examined and often compared to the new comers. From their point of view, there is more competition for shelf space, awards, and reader money. That segment will fight against the change within the ecosystem. They will do it viciously and brutally, because they are convinced that their survival is in doubt. If you read the original complaint with this in mind, you will see it. ... The preferences of the audience are shifting. They will not regress. So this is why this is so stark. This is why they banned Courtney for life." 🎤🔥


• (The legendary) Beverley Jenkins: "The future of the organization may be shaky but our commitment to our beloved genre is not."


• (The legendary) Julia Quinn: "I have signed the [recall] petition ... I am frankly disturbed by the underhanded machinations that appear to have taken place behind the scenes."


• N.K. Jemisin: "Been watching the RWA thing from afar and of course remembering the last time SFWA faced a similar test. ..." She later elaborated, for anyone who missed this galling moment.


• S.A. Chakraborty: "White writers, you know apologizing and genuinely reflecting on your actions instead of destroying yourself and your professional organization after being called racist is an option, right?"


• Racheline Maltese: "RWA has now spent more than a decade throwing marginalized members under the bus in the name of helping a small handful of authors avoid genre shame by getting to say they weren’t like the rest of us."


• Melissa Blue: "All I will say this here morning is that if you think the members of RWA had a problem with POC, just wait until see how they feel about gay people ... And Carol Ritter [the RWA exec director] is not about to lose her pension. She will throw you under a bus."


• The Bookish Vineyard YT channel recapped much of this, calling the RWA's push for diversity "a whole bunch of fucking lip service."


• Wendy Crutcher (former RWA Librarian of the Year): "The Call Is Coming From Inside The House: RWA, Ethics and Terrible Optics."  "The simple truth is that you can only hear promises so many times, have those promises go unfilled for so many years, before you finally receive the message."


• "The Ripped Bodice Awards for Excellence in Romantic Fiction inaugural class of honorees will be announced on 2/14/20. At the time we announced I guess it felt to rude to say but fuck it... they were designed to be the complete opposite of the romancewriters awards in every way.


• Jude Lucens: "Setting aside the specifics of the situation, I am left with this conclusion.  The RWA--a writers advocacy organisation--supported a publisher against an author member.  I'm sure that's not what they thought they were doing, but it's what they did."


• Laura Vivanco published thoughts re: romance scholars and academics, noting that using the RWA for grants is sketchy now, and that "I'm not sure how many romance scholars are still using the RITA awards when trying to create a corpus for study, but given the biases which have been revealed in the competition's procedures, we probably shouldn't be doing so, at least not unless we take them into account/are wanting to investigate those biases."


• Shiloh Walker, An open letter to RWA’s president, BOD. "Since when did Romance Writers of America become an advocate for the publisher over the writer? ... We deserve answers and you owe them to us."


• All About Romance. Has RWA lost its way? "RWA has damaged its reputation with a significant portion of its membership and with the romance community at large, and one can understand those of us who will be slow to risk trusting it again."


• Keeper Bookshelf. A Reader’s View of the RWA Implosion. "Logical or not, I’m most disappointed in the voices I haven’t yet seen. Their silence is speaking volumes to me, and illogically that makes me both sad and angry. I’ve learned some new facts these last few days that have me rethinking so much about the books I spent good money on, now and in the past."


• JenReadsRomance (of Kirkus Reviews: "There is not one single person I've seen trying to defend RWA that is engaging with the really horrifying real, most important issues: 1) That RWA national staff suppressed, ignored, or mocked valid complaints of mistreatment & outright racism from underrepresented authors ..."


• Romance Sparks Joy has a giant Twitter story with many more reactions.


• Reddit's r/HobbyDrama board discussed the whole thing in typical Reddit fashion


• Alyssa Cole: "I keep thinking how very American this RWA situation is. The organization was started by a Black woman and now bigots get to keep the infrastructure she and many other marginalized authors built, the money and connections, while we’re forced to start from scratch somewhere else."

Stories of other issues within the org:

****The RWA Problem Report Form*** <-- fill this out if you have an org story to share. full disclosure, I have no idea who owns this form or who this goes to, but presumably it's someone not-an-asshole.

The RWA never deals with complaints — and the complaints are often major:

A repeated theme that's come out during all this are stories of multiple people filing complaints to the org that go nowhere. Many never even receive replies to their complaints, and many others are encouraged not to pursue them.

• Since at least January, there's been an ongoing issue involving RWA authors doxxing, harassing, misgendering, and bullying other authors (and in one case reportedly doxing and threatening an author's small child). This has been widely discussed, and although at least one of these authors was reported to the RWA, nothing happened.


• Diana Hicks shared a deeply disheartening story about being invited to chair a contest committee for a local chapter, then being hit with a b.s. complaint with echoes of the one Milan faced, which resulted in her being asked to resign with very little explanation — in fact, the RWA reportedly asked for her resignation before it had even fully looked into the complaint. When she filed a complaint of her own, however, she received no response — and the woman she complained about is now the Georgia RWA chapter president. ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️


• Olivia Waite shared a response to three separate complaints she filed in 2019, none of which were dealt with or passed along to the ethics committee. The complaints she raised were filed under the same code of conduct rule that was later used to suspend Courtney Milan — only Waite was informed that this rule was only "aspirational in nature." (Waite also has a thread alleging that the RWA refused to censure or take action against numerous people who were being racist, homophobic, and transphobic mainly on the RWA's PAN forum before it was shut down, though there's no further sourcing of this that I've found so far.) Disturbingly, the RWA apparently lied when asked directly about Waite's complaints, claiming falsely that the org members she'd complained about had  since resigned. Not only are they still active, one of them is reportedly now the treasurer of her local RWA chapter. ☠️


• In a blog post, "The meanness is a feature, not a bug," longtime author Linda Hilton describes raising several issues DECADES ago, including instances of plagiarism and unprofessional behavior from agents, to the RWA, none of which received a response.


• On Twitter, Milan related a time she unsuccessfully filed a complaint with the RWA ethics committee against Pocket Books, after an acquisitions editor implied that the imprint doesn't accept works by Black and Latinx authors.


• Robin Covington tweeted, "I have filed two complaints and was actively discouraged from pursuing either one - now I wonder if they ever got to the ethics committee at all?"


• Beth Yarnell relates multiple incidents where an RWA chapter paid black speakers half its typical rate. Yarnell lodged a complaint with the RWA; nothing happened. (Here's more context from one of the authors in question.)


• Racheline Maltese: "When I contacted RWA about non-payment of royalties by Torquere (a now defunct LGBTQ romance publisher), I received no reply. When I contacted RWA about filing a professional complaint against a stock photography site that [was] harassing/threatening me and other queer customers, I was basically told this wasn't their problem. I was further discouraged from filing a formal complaint because they said they would give the individual I was complaining about all my identifying information and did I really want that? (I was -afraid- of this person I was trying to file a professional complaint about).

        For years, I've assumed I either didn't understand RWA's mission or contacted the wrong people or didn't make clear that my complaints were not individual 1-on-1 matters. Now, I just feel like in this endless stream of stories, the only logical conclusion left to me is that one or more paid RWA staffers have consistently had multiple categories of members they were so uncomfortable with they couldn't be bothered to do their jobs as regards them."

"Holy fucking shitballs"

RWA member Tymber Dalton received an anonymous email from a member of the D.C. RWA chapter, detailing a number of incidents in which the chapter facilitated a number of racially offensive moments — which resulted in the RWA censuring the chapter.

In January 2018, a white RWA member gave a talk for the chapter that was full of offensive racialized stereotypes and microaggressions. These included her resentment at being asked by editors to change an anti-Semitic character and other racist details in her writing, a racist description of Brooklyn's Red Hook, and an averral that "I drove around looking for the bad parts of town when I first moved to Boise, but there were no slums." Afterwards, the chapter shared an audio recording of the talk with its members, who split into predictable camps. The D.C. RWA chapter shut down discussion threads around the issue, and ultimately opted not to vet speakers in advance, but rather to place disclaimers on any potentially offensive speeches after the fact. 🙃

But then in April and May, more racist fuckery happened. At a romance writing panel which was paired with a chapter retreat, writer Mary Jo Putney referred to mixed-race characters as "half-breeds" repeatedly until she was asked to stop, MY ACTUAL LORD. And then at the actual retreat, a white author apparently clunkily joked "I'll raise you an African-American" ?!?! at one point, while an event emcee decided to do their entire speech as a parody of Donald Trump. Which went over like a lead balloon. The anger over all of this led to an emergency meeting — right after the chapter won an award for chapter excellence, which it subsequently had to return. 🙃🙃🙃 The emergency meeting started an hour late, and was attended by only one chapter board member (the president), who was very dismissive. Per Jane Doe: "The overall tone was 'we lost our award and we need to save face' as opposed to 'we’re hurting our most vulnerable members; how can we make this a safe environment for them?' It was, in a word, appalling."

The email contained a cover letter, a copy of the report itself, screencaps of various white women resigning in huffs after debate broke out, and SECRET AUDIO (!!!) of the chapter's emergency meeting around these events. The audio has not been re-released.

From Jane Doe: "What I include here were the purview and chaos overseen by the 2018 WRW board, but I think it's endemic of the bigger climate and pernicious nature of RWA National as well."

PAN gatekeeping:

Other org stories:

• Thao Le: "frankly some of my worst experiences as a industry professional have happened at RWA conferences ..."


• Sara Ramsey: "The staff is not in the business of supporting an org going through upheaval. Their goal seems to be *stopping* the upheaval."


• Bria Quinlan noted the RITA/ contest judging training is ineffective and lacks quality checking.


• Erin McRae chimed in with some absolute fuckery concerning the D.C. chapter's invention of bullshit to exclude her from participating in a book signing event as a m/m writer, along with some serious microaggressions she experienced.


• Piper Drake related an incident of racist microaggressions over her real name at her local RWA chapter. "These instances of microaggression and exclusion are probably happening in your chapter, now, and unless it’s happened to you, you’re probably unaware of it. Creating a safe and inclusive culture is something each of us can do for each other."

Press roundup:

Honestly, it's surprising this hasn't garnered more media attention, but perhaps that's because this whole mess is so dense it takes a reporter using up most of their Christmas holiday to try and accurately summarize it all. 😭

• The NY Post, "Romance writer Courtney Milan suspended over ‘racist mess’ claims"


• The Mary Sue, "Romance Writers Stand Behind Author Courtney Milan in Light of RWA Ruling"


• Associated Press, "Controversy hits Romance Writers of America this holiday"


• Houston Chronicle, "Houston-based Romance Writers of America sees board exodus after racism allegations." (Note this is slightly inaccurate but contains an interview with author Piper Huguley)


• The Wrap, "Romance Writers Drama: Courtney Milan’s Suspension Rescinded, 8 Nonwhite Board Members Resign"


• USA Today, "Turmoil hits Romance Writers of America after author suspended for calling out racism."


• NY Times, "Racism Dispute Roils Romance Writers Group."

THE END

You did it, you made it through! Here's the takeaway, ICYMI:

• Org is in shambles, seems pretty damn riddled with racism at every level


• Old president resigned, new pres is a fuckface, there will likely be an upcoming RWA vote to recall him


• Come join the Romance Alliance!


• Support diversity!

leviosa2016

bicrim

rurounihime

snottygrrl

red_rahl

• dictacontrion for being so lovely and nice and so smart and articulate, and for getting me excited about new H/D fic while also preaching the gospel of Not Being Afraid of Tumblr to all the old-timers. If you haven't checked out her LJ post about how to use Tumblr, it's a really nice intro!
  
• oceaxe, who I had totally lost touch with and was totally delighted to meet and get to spend lots of time with this weekend. You're awesome. :)
  
• femmequixotic and noeon for convincing me to do a bunch of panels that all turned out to be a really great time
  
• writcraft for being such an amazing mod and contributor in all of her many panels, and such a smart, articulate thinker with so many broad areas of interests and such a fabulous ability to listen and process the conversation. I'm so happy I got a chance to meet you!
  
• furiosity because I had never gotten a chance before to meet her despite our many years hopping around HP cons, and it was really nice to have a moment just to chat! I hope your Japan tour is epic, F!
  
• Stephanie and her mom!!!! Stephanie IDK if you will see this, haha, but you are both great. <3
  
• of course my lovely hotel roommates Jill, Tracy, and Elizabeth, who put up with me and my social neuroses most admirably. :) And Lilah Vandenburgh, who probably won't see this post but who is supremely fantastic.
  

two_if_by_sea

In a 2010 New York Review of Books essay on the Facebook generation, Zadie Smith wrote, “At my screening [of The Social Network], when a character in the film mentioned the early blog platform LiveJournal (still popular in Russia), the audience laughed.” She went on to dub the site “comically obsolete.”

Once universally praised for founder Brad Fitzpatrick’s open-source platform and commitment to a free userbase—he once vowed that LiveJournal would always have basic (non-paying or ad-supported) accounts—LiveJournal is known these days mostly for being popular in Russia (the Russian name for blogging is “LJ.”) and Singapore, and for housing gossip blog Oh No They Didn’t.

What happened?

- The demise of a social media platform: Tracking LiveJournal's decline