Dear Reader,
Today I’m writing to you in regards to the About section on my blog, because that event that I desperately wanted to host Romance, the whole reason I started keeping an index of authors?
It happened!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I need to record the experience; for myself and for the past, present and future of Romance’s seat at the literal and figurative literary table.
On Saturday October 29, 2022 my dream of having a CanLit Romance panel at the Wild Writers Literary Festival happened.
There I was on Saturday morning, anxious AF on the 30-minute drive to Waterloo, Ontario, going solo to my first event since the pandemic started, a panel stacked with 3 authors whose books are dear to my heart. The only other Romance author I’d seen in real life to this point was Helena Hunting (who is so kind, go see her at her next signing!). I’d met non-Romance Canadian authors galore over volunteership during the first 8 years of WWLF’s existence, and 99% of those experiences were glorious. Writers are good times! But these Romance panel writers are extra special to me; I’d never before come to the festival with books from my keeper shelf to be signed. Also, having retired from active duty after the 2019 festival, this was the first time I just got to show up and have fun! Weeeeeee!
I secured my N95 and the fabric mask overtop (for fashion!), then walked into the building at the same time as another person, and we engaged in delightful small talk as we went, and they looked familiar but I couldn’t quite place them, which isn’t unusual for me on a festival weekend. They disappeared, and I stopped to say hello to the front desk volunteers and delivered a box of Halloween candy; ‘tis the season! The 4 of them ripped right into the candy box, I had a quick chat, then moved along to the book table and dove into my highly anticipated shopping spree. While stacking my purchases on the table, I told my anxiety to take a break, this was fine. I’m fine! I had about half an hour before the panel started, I just needed to relax and find someone else to chat with.
At this point the festival was in its first session block of the day, so the small hallway was quiet, with a handful of people sitting in the few very comfy chairs that lined it. I saw an acquaintance standing near them, alone, so I headed over and we visited. I mentioned I was there for the Romance panel. Then a woman sitting near me said, “Are you Catherine?”
Me: “Yes!”
My brain: THAT IS ZOE YORK. STANDING IN FRONT OF ME. SHE’S REAL, THIS IS REAL.
Dear Reader; I was a deer in the headlights. I was a statue. I was frozen in time, though I suspect time kept moving and I just stood there for an entire 60 seconds. Years of meeting authors, famous authors, authors with movies and mini series based on their books, did not prepare me to meet an author whose work I adore and have read in great quantities. I can’t remember if I promptly burst into tears or if it was a slow trickle, but I think the first things I said were “Oh my gosh, you’re here!” and “Will you sign my books?!” and probably “I’m already crying!”
To be clear, I figured I wouldn’t burst into tears until the panel was in full swing. But my pockets were stuffed with tissues because I had known I absolutely would be crying that day.
My thanks to the person who was with Zoe who asked with the utmost love and respect, “Are you fangirling?” so I could shriek for all to hear, “YES I AM FANGIRLING!” And then we all laughed, and I think that helped recall my soul to my body. I have no idea what happened to the pal I’d been chatting with. My boyband fangirling in the 1990s has nothing on my Romance author fangirling of the 2020s.
I’m not going to relive the entire experience here, a fan’s gotta have some private memories, but the condensed version is that over the next 2 hours I had the opportunity to thank Zoe, Molly O’Keefe and Jackie Lau for sharing their work with all of us, (Sonya Singh unfortunately wasn’t able to make it), and the panel, titled Exciting Times; Unsettling Times: Writing Romance, moderated in stellar fashion by fabulous festival team AND Romancelandia member Sue Danic, lived up to the hype. The atmosphere in the room, that had approximately 15 in the audience, felt friendly, warm, and inclusive. For the first time in a literary setting I didn’t feel like an imposter. I had some new resources to look up, I was cheered by tales of rebounding success after all-to-real failure, I was strengthened by the reality check that all ways of writing are the right ways of writing, and I was—am—inspired to go full-force on the second draft of my own manuscript this NaNoWriMo (which starts in 2 days of me writing this post). Annnnd since I’ve decided to self publish, finally, after years of internal debate, I now also am emboldened to take a good look at my secondary characters and plant seeds for a series. This panel was AWESOME.
All 3 authors were generous with their time and utterly supportive, both during the panel and when I approached them post-panel. One thing my collective past experiences with the festival did prepare me for was finding the guts to just go over to an author in the hallway and ask them to sign my books. Was there a formal book signing station set up? Yes. Have I learned not to wait around for that? Also yes. Many authors have told me over the years that those hallway engagements are really special, so at this point in my CanLit event experience I figure if an author is just standing around in the hallway, it’s okay to say hello. Calmly, respectfully, and hopefully while not bursting into tears…again.
And when it was all over and I was about to go home on a Best Day Ever, I received 2 well-meaning-yet-still-condescending verbal pats on the head from other festival goers for being a fan of Romance. The wind in my sails disappeared for a few seconds. Then I reminded myself that this was the very reason I was purposefully vocal about being a member of Romancelandia in literary spaces at all. With that in mind, I left on a high note after all.
***
At the time of writing, the panel occurred yesterday. I hope it always feels like yesterday; it already feels surreal. Probably because it took so long for this dream to come true, and then it was over in 2 hours.
So, how did a Romance panel happen at this tiny litfest where I was the only out-loud fan of the genre? Well, that’s the heart at the reasons this post, and the Index, exist.
The following timeline will demonstrate, I hope, why I burst into tears:
November 2011: WWLF Year 1. My mind concocted this dream of seeing Romance on the schedule, and figured it was an impossibility.
November 2014: After we’d hosted other fiction subgenres (mystery, YA science fiction), my dream turned into hope, but I realized I didn’t even know who to suggest for the panel.
February 2017: I had a strong list of Canadian Romance authors to suggest, somehow got invited to join the festival committee (I had been a volunteer since year one and linked to the parent organization since 2006 so it really wasn’t that out-of-nowhere tbh), and said the words “Romance Panel” out loud at a planning session. And it was well received! But didn’t happen that year.
February 2019: I put Romance back on the table, gave a good pep talk about Love Is For Everyone, and Misogyny Is Very Loud And Prejudice Is A Thing And It Is Really Obvious When You Pat Me On The Head Because I Love Romance, and how Joy Is Not A Bad Thing, and it was again well received! I was utterly supported despite the fact no one else admitted to reading Romance, which as many of you know is not the norm in a literary and largely academic setting, these are excellent humans. But the panels had already been planned out; perhaps the next year?
November 2019: I burnt out in general and retired from all festival involvement (and a lot of other commitments, this wasn’t the festival’s issue in any way).
March 2020: PANDEMIC! Oh gosh, am I ever glad I retired and don’t have to figure out how to go entirely digital, SORRY WWLF, I LOVE YOU THOUGH.
April 2020: The Index of Romance authors in and from Canada goes live!
June 2022: I get The Text from a festival organizer that a ROMANCE PANEL IS HAPPENING!
Feels like that came out of nowhere, eh? Now, hold on a sec.
What happened between the dates listed on my timeline is that the more I talked about Romance in my local literary community, the more OTHER people in the community talked about Romance. Other festival team members excitedly sent me links when Romance was discussed on CBC or other media they encountered, FOLD hosted an entire Romance DAY! And, I heard over and over again about a new member of the WWLF team who was at least as much in awe of Romancelandia as I am, and how they had taken on the campaign after I retired. Even though I was no longer in action, Romance was still being put on the litfest table, and I like to think that my years of saying “What about Romance?” had a little something to do with the 2022 panel.
The screenshot I sent to the organizer of the TRW 2022 WOTS poster with the caption “If you confirm even one of these authors you will have to peel me off the floor” might have also helped.
They confirmed two!
***
Why am I sharing this on the internet? Because Romance deserves a place at the literary table. The definition of “literature,” in short, is a well-written artistic work, extra points awarded when the work is relatable. I’m going to point you in the direction of Britannica for the long of it. Works with shifters and demons and time travel are relatable, sometimes you don’t even have to read between the lines to “get it”. Romance, and all subgenres of fiction, apply to all of these characteristics of literature.
Romance novels ARE literary works.
Every small step helps get it there, and I hope that if you have the opportunity to spread the love of Romance that you do so, even if it’s just to put Romance novels into the little free libraries that otherwise are stacked with, well, not Romance. Every library event and bookstore signing, every social media live interview, every festival inclusion gets Romance on to general Best Of lists, a larger section in the bookstore, and on to more readers. The less Romance is treated as a dirty little secret, the more we the readers can demand that publishers do better with Romance diversity in all areas. I was thirty years old before I read a Romance novel that included a non-white main character. It was an epiphany, one that shocked me (as it should have), and yesterday I got to thank that author for writing that book, and we had an excellent chat about it and what Romance traditional publishing looked like at that time versus now. I was older than thirty before I first read Romances featuring queer, disabled and fat main characters. Fuck, that knowledge hurts me. But I need to own that responsibility, I did not try to diversify my reading, why would publishers and booksellers try either if that’s not what I’m buying? My goal with this blog, of the Index, of asking for Romance to be included everywhere is so readers that come after me don’t wait until their thirties to see themselves represented in Romance (in my case it’s the fat rep, just FYI).
Eventually I want to expand the Index to include cities as well as provinces, tropes, genres, relationships, all the things that will make it easy for a reader to find exactly the content they’ve been searching for, and for event hosts to find exactly who they’ve been searching for; and the authors they didn’t know they were missing. I just want love to win.
Please send recs; and attend local Romance events so that hosts know they should have more!
Love From,
The True North
P.S. Thank you dearly to everyone who shared my social media heart-on-my-sleeve posts about the festival, the conversations that came from it made me less anxious on the day, more joyful, and I think we made up a third of the room!
P.P.S. If you’d like to help me cover the cost of hosting the Index, you can buy me a ko-fi.
HEA Canada: A CanLit Romance Hub 