In July 2021, I travelled for a family holiday to the sleepy, largely rural Shetland Islands (population 22,990) in far northern Scotland. My chosen holiday…
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I started reading romance novels when I was twelve years old. These books were not my mom’s forbidden paperbacks, which had titles like Wild Rapture…
Comments closedIt’s the summer of 1969, and my father is singing a love song. I am five, living in the white, two-story Dean’s House at the…
Comments closedAs a researcher, I often find myself in a situation where I can reflect on two of the fields I work in at once. These…
Comments closedA version of this article was presented at Concepts in Popular Genre Fiction, Deakin University, 6 – 8 December 2021 LGBTQIA+ characters (and their quests…
Comments closedSally Rooney’s Normal People (2018) is a refined, touching, and quintessentially current coming-of-age narrative that recounts the romantic encounters of two young people, Marianne and…
Comments closedAt the opening keynote panel presentation at the 2013 Popular Romance Author Symposium (Princeton University, October 24, 2013), a member of the audience asked, “Who…
Comments closedIn 2014, cultural commentator Noah Berlatsky wrote in Salon that there wasn’t even a provisional consensus on which books were the best or essential romance…
Comments closed“Canon building is empire building. Canon defense is national defense. Canon debate, whatever the terrain, nature, and range (of criticism, of history, of the history…
Comments closedIs there a popular romance canon? If any, then many, though maybe’s there’s none (though we all know, deep down, that there is): that, my…
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