People | Popular Romance Fiction Conference

Keynote

Roxane Gay, speaker

Roxane Gay is an author and cultural critic. Her work garners international acclaim for its reflective, no-holds-barred exploration of feminism and social criticism. With a deft eye on modern culture, she brilliantly critiques its ebb and flow with both wit and ferocity.

Her collection of essays, Bad Feminist, is universally considered the quintessential exploration of modern feminism. NPR named it one of the best books of the year and Salon declared the book “trailblazing.” Her powerful debut novel, An Untamed State, was long listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. In 2017, Roxane released her bestselling memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, as well as her acclaimed collection of short stories, Difficult Women. In 2018, she released Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, a valuable and searing anthology that has been described as “essential reading” and a “call to arms” by its readers. In 2020, Roxane released the short story Graceful Burdens, as an Amazon Single, as well as a graphic novel called The Sacrifice of Darkness. Roxane was the first Black woman to lead a Marvel title, writing a comic series in the Black Panther universe called World of Wakanda.

Roxane hosts the Webby Award-winning podcast The Roxane Gay Agenda where she has interesting conversations with interesting people. She also pens the “work friend” advice column for the New York Times, and in 2021 she began her own publishing imprint with Grove Atlantic, “Roxane Gay Books.” She is at work on television and film projects, including a film adaptation of Hunger and a television adaptation of her comic book The Banks. Her forthcoming book projects include How to Be Heard, on writing advice and how to use your voice; The Year I Learned Everything, a YA novel; and a romance novel co-authored with actor (and fan of Roxane’s) Channing Tatum.

Beverly Jenkins, speaker

Beverly Jenkins is the recipient of the 2018 Michigan Author Award by the Michigan Library Association, the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for historical romance. She has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Literature and was featured in both the documentary Love Between the Covers and on CBS Sunday Morning. Since the publication of Night Song in 1994, she has been leading the charge for inclusive romance, and has been a constant darling of reviewers, fans, and her peers alike, garnering accolades for her work from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, NPR, and the New York Times.

Karen Grigsby Bates, moderator

Karen Grigsby Bates is a founding member of Code Switch, NPR’s award-winning podcast that reports on race, ethnicity and culture. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before joining Code Switch. She specialized in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She spent several years covering books and publishing for NPR and for Code Switch, with a special concentration on books by and about people of color and also covered issues of race and diversity in the publishing industry. Bates is often asked to speak on book panels, such as the National Book Festival and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. And she’s interviewed scores of authors, from Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro and National Book Award winner James McBride to New York Times bestsellers Beverly Jenkins and Walter Moseley.

Bates was born and raised in New Haven, CT, and spent a lot of time in New Haven’s libraries. She graduated with double majors in BA in Sociology and Black Studies from Wellesley College, and has also studied at the University of Ghana and at Yale’s School of Management.

Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels, and is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She’s currently working on a novel about Black students on a New England campus in the 1970s.

Panelists

11:30 - 12:00 PM | Yale Divinity School Morning Worship with Eucharist

Beverly Jenkins

Beverly Jenkins is the recipient of the 2018 Michigan Author Award by the Michigan Library Association, the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for historical romance. She has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Literature and was featured in both the documentary Love Between the Covers and on CBS Sunday Morning. Since the publication of Night Song in 1994, she has been leading the charge for inclusive romance, and has been a constant darling of reviewers, fans, and her peers alike, garnering accolades for her work from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, NPR, and the New York Times.

Rev. Jeania Ree Moore

Rev. Jeania Ree Moore is a doctoral student in African American Studies and Religious Studies at Yale and ordained United Methodist clergy. Her dissertation has its roots in the Beverly Jenkins romance novels she used to pilfer as a teen from her grandmother’s bookshelf (Topaz being a favorite). She holds an M.Phil. in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge, an M.Div. from Emory University, and a B.A. in Humanities from Yale. She is published in The Anglican Theological Review, Concilium: International Journal for Theology, Sojourners, and other publications.

12:45 - 3:15 PM | How to Write a Romance Novel Workshop

Adriana Herrera

USA Today Best Selling author Adriana was born and raised in the Caribbean, but for the last fifteen years has let her job (and her spouse) take her all over the world. She loves writing stories about people who look and sound like her people, getting unapologetic happy endings.

When she’s not dreaming up love stories, planning logistically complex vacations with her family or hunting for discount Broadway tickets, she’s a trauma therapist in New York City, working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

Her Dreamers series has received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist and has been featured in The TODAY Show on NBC, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Library Journal and The Washington Post. Her debut, American Dreamer, was selected as one of Booklist’s Best Romance Debuts of 2019, and one of the Top 10 Romances of 2019 by Entertainment Weekly. Her third novel, American Love Story, was one of the winners in the first annual Ripped Bodice Award for Excellence in Romantic Fiction. Adriana is an outspoken advocate for diversity in romance and has written for Remezcla and Bustle about Own Voices in the genre. She’s one of the co-creators of the Queer Romance PoC Collective.

Sarah MacLean

A life-long romance reader, Sarah MacLean wrote her first romance novel on a dare, and never looked back. She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of romances translated into more than twenty-five languages, a romance columnist and the co-host of the weekly romance novel podcast, Fated Mates. A graduate of Smith College & Harvard University, she lives in New York City. Her latest novel, Knockout, was released in August.

3:15-3:30 PM | Guided tour of Beinecke exhibition with remarks by Prof. Nicole Jackson

Nicole Jackson

Nicole M. Jackson has a PhD in African American and African Diaspora history. Her work focuses on twentieth-century social movements in the U. S. and UK, and representation of people of African descent in popular culture. She also writes erotica and romance under the pen name Katrina Jackson.

4:00 PM | Welcome Remarks

4:15 PM | Love Between the Covers (2015) documentary screening

6:00 PM | Panel 1: Revisiting Romance

A two-part panel, moderated by Dr. Jayashree Kamblé (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY/IASPR)

Part I: Director talk-back with documentarian Laurie Kahn and writers from film Eloisa James (pen name for Mary Bly, GSAS ‘95PhD) and Beverly Jenkins, on writer experience, making the film, romance as a literary vehicle of hope, how Romancelandia has changed since the film with attention to class, race, sexuality, gender, technology, publishing, and more.

Part II: Continuing the discussion with Ripped Bodice bookstore founders and sisters Leah Koch and Bea Koch (YC’12) and romance editor Monique Patterson (Bramble/TOR), with attention to recent and future changes in the industry. This first panel will introduce the themes of the conference.

Jayashree Kamblé

Jayashree Kamble is Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. Her first book was Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology (2014) and she is a co-editor of the Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction (2021). She serves as the President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. After completing her second book, Creating Identity: The Popular Romance Heroine’s Journey to Selfhood and Self-Presentation, out this June from Indiana University Press, she is now working on a history of BIPOC romance, and the research is supported by an American Council of Learned Societies/Mellon fellowship and the CUNY Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies grant.

Laurie Kahn

Director/Producer/Writer Laurie Kahn brings the lives of compelling, unknown women to the screen. Her films have won major awards, been shown on Netflix and PBS primetime, broadcast worldwide, screened at prominent museums and film festivals, and used widely in classrooms and community groups.

Laurie’s first film, A Midwife’s Tale (a doc/drama hybrid based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book) won a primetime EMMY for Outstanding Non-Fiction Program. Her documentary TUPPERWARE! won the George Foster Peabody Award and was nominated for the primetime EMMY for Outstanding Nonfiction Directing. And her documentary Love Between the Covers received festival awards and five stars at Netflix.

Before Laurie became an independent producer, she worked on Eyes on the Prize, The American Experience, Frontline’s Crisis in Central America, All Things Considered, and Time Out. She’s currently part of a team with WGBH and Anonymous Content developing a streaming dramatic series based on her documentary film TUPPERWARE!

Mary Bly

Mary Bly is a Shakespeare professor and Chair of the English Department at Fordham University, as well as a New York Times bestselling author of over 30 historical romance novels written as Eloisa James (26 languages, world sales of 7 million). In 2022, she launched a story on Amazon Vella, which reached #3 on the leaderboard with over 20K likes. She also wrote the New York Times bestselling memoir, Paris in Love, about the year her family spent in France. CBS Sunday Morning celebrated her as the “reigning queen of romance.” Her most recent book is Not that Duke, published by Harper Collins in July.

Beverly Jenkins

Beverly Jenkins is the recipient of the 2018 Michigan Author Award by the Michigan Library Association, the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for historical romance. She has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Literature and was featured in both the documentary Love Between the Covers and on CBS Sunday Morning. Since the publication of Night Song in 1994, she has been leading the charge for inclusive romance, and has been a constant darling of reviewers, fans, and her peers alike, garnering accolades for her work from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, NPR, and the New York Times.

Leah and Bea Koch

Leah and Bea Koch are sisters and the owners of The Ripped Bodice bookstore, an independent brick-and-mortar bookstore devoted to the celebration of romance novels with locations in Los Angeles, California and Brooklyn, New York. The Ripped Bodice features a vast and diverse selection of romance fiction. In addition to books, the store has a wide selection of gift items with a focus on supporting independent, woman owned businesses.

The store and its owners undertake several large projects each year including The Ripped Bodice State of Racial Diversity in Romance Report, the Read, Romance, Repeat subscription box and the development of television projects based on romance novels in association with Sony Pictures Television.

Bea and Leah grew up in Chicago, IL. Bea attended Yale University and NYU, where she wrote a graduate thesis titled “Mending the Ripped Bodice.” In 2020, she published her first book, Mad & Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency.

Leah moved to Los Angeles to attend USC and received a degree in Visual and Performing Arts Studies.

Both sisters are lifelong romance readers and feel lucky to spend their days surrounded by books.

Monique Patterson

Monique Patterson is vice president and editorial director of Bramble. The quote “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town,” by Leo Tolstoy is one of her favorites, because it immediately sets to mind all the possibilities of a fantastic story. Finding books and authors that reach across the breadth of our experiences as humans is important to her. Publishing a wide array of romance, commercial women’s fiction, and a select amount of nonfiction allows Monique to explore all of those experiences. Some of her upcoming titles are Calamity by Constance Fay, The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent, and Gothikana by RuNyx.

Saturday, September 9

9:00 - 10:30 AM | Panel 2: Romance as a Site of Education, Challenge, and Hope

Panel will discuss romance as a site and vehicle for learning, teaching, and ethics, with themes of race, sexuality, gender, and more.

Moderator: Dr. Mira Debs (Yale)

Mira Debs

Panelists: Dr. Kecia Ali (Boston University), Alyssa Cole, Adriana Herrera, Dr. Nicole Jackson (Bowling Green State University), Dr. Kimuli Kasara (Columbia)

Kecia Ali

Kecia Ali is Professor Religion at Boston University. In addition to her book Human in Death: Morality and Mortality in J. D. Robb’s Novels (Baylor 2017), she is the author of various articles about ethics, race, and the good life in the work of authors including Suzanne Brockmann, Nora Roberts, and Nalini Singh. She has also published several books about Islam, mostly focused on gender, marriage law, and textual interpretation. Her current projects include an introductory book on Women in Muslim Traditions. You can read more about her at www.keciaali.com.

Alyssa Cole

Alyssa Cole is a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of romance and thrillers. Her debut thriller When No One Is Watching was the winner of the 2021 Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Paperback Original and the Strand Critics Award for Best Debut. Her Civil War-set espionage romance An Extraordinary Union was the American Library Association’s RUSA Best Romance for 2018, and her contemporary royal romcom A Princess in Theory was one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018. Her books have received critical acclaim from the New York Times, Library Journal, Buzzfeed, Kirkus, Booklist, Jezebel, Shondaland, Vulture, Book Riot, Entertainment Weekly, and various other outlets. When she’s not working, she can usually be found watching anime or wrangling her pets.

Adriana Herrera

Nicole Jackson

Kimuli Kasara

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM | Panel 3: From Bodice Rippers to Bridgerton – Romance on the Public Stage

Panel will discuss romance’s varied public receptions, reputations, and material transformations over the decades; book history and literary scholarship on Black popular fiction; media romance phenomena; and the ground-breaking oral histories produced by the podcasts of scholar Dr. Julie Moody-Freeman (the Black Romance podcast) and romance writer Sarah MacLean and romance critic Jen Prokop (Fated Mates podcast).

Moderator: Jeania Ree Moore (Yale)

Jeania Ree Moore

Jeania Ree Moore is a doctoral student in African American Studies and Religious Studies at Yale. Her research uses religion and theology to analyze affectively charged intersections in African American history and culture, such as romance novels and race, and racialization and animalization. She holds an M.Phil. in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge, an M.Div. from Emory University, and a B.A. in Humanities from Yale. She is ordained clergy (United Methodist) and is published in The Anglican Theological Review, Concilium: International Journal for Theology, Sojourners, and other publications.

Panelists: Dr. Carole Bell, Sarah MacLean, Dr. Julie Moody-Freeman (DePaul University), Dr. Kinohi Nishikawa (Princeton), Jen Prokop

Carole Bell

Carole Bell is a Jamaican-born communication researcher, writer, and critic with two decades of experience working at the intersection of media, culture, and politics. A lover of books, TV, film and democracy, her writing has appeared in print and digital media outlets including NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and theGrio, and she is a contributor to the recent Black Love Matters essay anthology. Carole’s research focuses on group identity and the societal and political effects. She earned her PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill’s School for Media and Journalism, a Master’s in Television and Radio from Brooklyn College, and a Bachelor’s in English and American Literature from Harvard. Her current book project is a multi-method analysis of the representation, reception, and social and political significance of Black-White romantic narratives in American film since the Civil Rights Movement.

Sarah MacLean

Julie Moody-Freeman

Julie E. Moody-Freeman is the Director of the Center for Black Diaspora, Co-Director of the Social Transformation Research Collaborative, and an Associate Professor in the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University. She is the co-editor of The Black Imagination, Science Fiction, and the Speculative and The Black Imagination: Science Fiction, Futurism, and the Speculative. Her work on African American Romance has appeared in Romance Fiction and American Culture, The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction, the Journal for Popular Romance Studies, and Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters. She is also the creator and host of the Black Romance Podcast, which is building an oral history on Black Romance writers.

Kinohi Nishikawa

Kinohi Nishikawa is Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at Princeton University, where he conducts research in African American print and popular cultures. He is the author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground (2018), and he is currently writing “Black Paratext,” a history of modern African American literature and book design. Nishikawa is editor of the forthcoming 1990s volume of the series African American Literature in Transition; he has also edited special issues of the journals American Literature and Post45 Contemporaries. His writing on Black independent publishing, from the Black Arts movement to contemporary urban fiction, has appeared in PMLA, MELUS, and American Literary History, as well as the collections Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century and The Edinburgh History of Reading.

Jen Prokop

Jen’s lifelong romance habit began in 7th grade when she found a bag of remaindered romance novels in her grandmother’s basement. She co-hosts the podcast Fated Mates and reviews romance for Kirkus. A graduate of Villanova University and Northwestern University, Jen currently lives with her family in Chicago.

1:30 p.m. - 2:30 PM | Panel 4: Black Romance spotlight collaboration at Elm City LIT Fest.

Panel will discuss the power, politics, and provocations of Black popular romance.

Moderator: Ryan Lindsay, MDiv ‘23, STM ‘24 (Yale)

Panelists: Dr. Carole Bell, Dr. Margo Hendricks (UC Santa Cruz), Adriana Herrera, Krystal Marquis, Tara Roí

Ryan Lindsay

Ryan Lindsay (she/hers) is an Emmy-award winning journalist, preacher & entrepreneur. She believes in storytelling as a powerful tool for healing and change. Whether she’s in the pulpit, the streets, the classroom or on the stage, Ryan Lindsay leads with love to connect with those around her.

Her forthcoming book, Mine the Unseen, explores abortion as a pathway to healing while navigating the reality of choosing to have an abortion as a Black, Christian woman in America. For more, visit www.glossrags.com. You can find her on Instagram at @sheberyanlindsay.

Carole Bell

Carole Bell is a Jamaican-born communication researcher, writer, and critic with two decades of experience working at the intersection of media, culture, and politics. A lover of books, TV, film and democracy, her writing has appeared in print and digital media outlets including NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and theGrio, and she is a contributor to the recent Black Love Matters essay anthology. Carole’s research focuses on group identity and the society and political effects and implications of news and entertainment media. She earned her PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill’s School fo Media and Journalism, a Master’s in Television and Radio from Brooklyn College, and a Bachelor’s in English and American Literature from Harvard. Her current book project is a multi-method analysis of the representation, reception, and social and political significance of Black-White romantic narratives in American film since the Civil Rights Movement.

Margo Hendricks

Margo Hendricks borrowed from her daughter’s name to write romance fiction and thus was born Elysabeth Grace. Elysabeth Grace creates books that offer adventurous and complex characters, Black and multicultural relationships, and the usual obstacles to getting to an HEA. Margo is also Professor Emerita in Shakespeare and early modern literature at UC Santa Cruz, and occasionally still dabbles. Her most recent academic book is Race and Romance: Coloring the Past (ACMRS Press 2022)

Probably unimportant but worth a mention: while she can take or leave most sports, she is Arsenal forever.

Adriana Herrera

Krystal Marquis

Krystal Marquis happily spends most of her time in libraries and used bookstores. She studied biology at Boston College and University of Connecticut and now works as an environmental, health, and safety manager for an online retailer. A lifelong reader, Krystal began researching and writing on a dare to complete the NaNoWriMo Challenge, resulting in the first partial draft of The Davenports. When not writing or planning trips to local bookstores to discover her next favorite romance, Krystal enjoys hiking, expanding her shoe collection, and plotting ways to create her own Jurassic Park.

Tara Roí

Tara L. Roi is the pen name of author, educator, and multi-media artist Rebekah Fraser, YC ‘93/’03 (Film Studies/Screenwriting). An award-winning social entrepreneur and former journalist, Fraser has published a nonfiction book about climate change and four novels. The contemporary romance novels she publishes as Tara L. Roi feature environmental justice themes and older Biracial heroines like herself.

A resident of New Haven, Ms. Fraser is earning her MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University (graduating Jan. 2024). She is a member of RWA, CRWA, and IASPR and leads writing workshops online and at conferences.

When she isn’t writing, she indulges her passion for the arts, the outdoors, and family. Whether she’s painting, singing, enjoying loved ones, practicing yoga, or hiking, she’s often thinking up meet-cutes. You can find her online chatting about romance novels and the writing process.

linktr.ee/TaraLRoi and linktr.ee/RebekahLFraser

2:30 - 4:00 PM | Book signing for LIT Fest

Roxane Gay (signing until 3pm), Beverly Jenkins (signing until 3pm), Adriana Herrera, Krystal Marquis, Tara Roi, Jayashree Kamble, and more

6:00 - 7:45 PM | Keynote

Roxane Gay, Beverly Jenkins, and Karen Grigsby Bates

Organizing Committee

Iman AbdoulKarim

A PhD candidate in African American Studies and Religious Studies, Iman’s dissertation sets out to think with twentieth century black Muslima intellectuals who imagined the world otherwise. Iman has a deep enthusiasm for public humanities and hosts a podcast that breaks down big ideas with fellow Yale doctoral candidate Kohar Avakian. Check out Name It!’s episode “Lorde, Have Mercy” on Audre Lorde’s powerful rendering of the erotic, and for bonus points, read Lorde’s essay ”Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power.”

Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra

Lisa is a landscape-architect-turned-academic studying religion, race, and architecture (read: the Catholic Church as imperial agent of racial geographies) in the Department of Religious Studies and the School of Architecture. Lisa loves thinking about design and especially finds fascination in observing the developing trend of illustrated romance covers.

Erica Edwards

Erica Edwards is Professor of English and African American Studies, where she teaches courses in American literature, Black studies, and feminist theory. She is author of The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of U.S. Empire (2021; finalist for the Association of Publishers Prose Award and for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Book Prize) and of Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (2012; winner of the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize). She is co-founder with Professor Crystal Feimster of the Black Feminist Collective, a new initiative launching this year at Yale.

Lacey Jones

When she’s not working on a dissertation about the secular’s fascination with “the meta-” as a strategy for repairing intimacy, Lacey can be found writing poetry, editing for The Yale Review, and trying to continue her multi-year stint in the top .01% of MUNA listeners on Spotify.

Jeania Ree Moore

Jeania Ree Moore’s dissertation has its roots in the Beverly Jenkins romance novels she used to pilfer as a teen from her grandmother’s bookshelf (Topaz being a favorite). Alongside her work in religious studies, theology, and Black studies, the past few years have also yielded a wild crash course in popular romance studies, enabled by fantastic resources like the Black Romance podcast, the Fated Mates podcast, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, scholars too numerous to name, and the general bounty of Romancelandia.

Rebecca Lea Potts

Rebecca is a scholar of religious materiality and aesthetics in the American built environment. While researching the religious, racial, economic, and gendered formations of West Texas for her dissertation, she eagerly awaits every new Sherry Thomas release and self-medicates with healthy doses of romance, fantasy, YA, and the occasional mystery. She hopes, one day, to finish her own queer historical romance novel.