What is Love? A Romance Fiction Conference

The day I skipped out on work to go to a romance fiction convention being held at the Library of Congress, my friend Jillian asked me what exactly a romance fiction conference is: "Is it like....the crazy books you find at garage sales and you think man why are you letting the whole town know you read that when your marriage hit a dry spell?"

Yes. Yes it is.

Romance fiction is a 1.8 billion-dollar industry, one that pays for all the rest of the literary fiction that publishers publish in order to look cool, but that really doesn't sell. Romance fiction keeps the lights on in the publishing world.

According to "Love Between the Covers," a documentary I got to watch in special sneak preview the night before the conference (I highly recommend it. It's funny, interesting, and they don't have the money to finish and release it yet, but when they do, you should watch it), romance fiction is one of the most feminist industries out there. If you think about it, it's a convincing argument: these books are written by women for women, and for the most part they celebrate women's sexualities on women's terms.

So what exactly IS a romance fiction conference?

It's a whole bunch of middle-aged middle-class women with glasses and top buns sitting in a room and laughing, cheering, arguing, discussing, thinking, voicing, ignoring, frustrating, and celebrating each other and one of the things that influences their lives the most: those romance novels from the corner store that most people hide in their bedside stands.

+The Conference Pros:

• A fun day spent out of the office, which is why Kay and I decided to go in the first place.
• Free swag. Seriously, they had tables and tables giving out free romance novels. You could take as many as you wanted. I took five, which is probably more than I will read in my lifetime. There were also PENS and BOOKMARKS and FREE BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY'S PUBLISHING HOUSE and most importantly TOTE BAGS. Good times.
• They had some really cool people as panelists. Really, these women are extraordinary. They are intelligent, well-spoken women and prolific writers (to make it as an author, you've got to publish about three books a year). They're doing what most people only dream of doing: they're writing books.
• The attempt at diversity. They had a few panelists who were not your average white middle-class woman, and the perspectives they added were the most interesting part for me. I want to know more about the history of African American romances, for instance.
• That the authors kept saying: "we're doing this, and you can do it too." At one point they had people in the audience raise their hands if they were authors, or if they wanted to be. About half the audience raised their hands. They gave each other advice, even in the middle of panels. Everyone is an author and reader both, and that's cool.

-The Conference Cons:

• The complacence. These women for the most part are happy with the romance world and all its shiny-abbed covers. They're proud of their industry and they don't need it change. Except...
• The lack of diversity. This was my biggest issue with romance fiction and the conference as well. I don't mean that all the novels are formulaic, because any type of fiction is formulaic. I mean that in their formulas they're missing huge racial, lifestyle, and class segments of the population. When the white, straight middle class is generally what wins out in their novels, I see what's missing in their worldview. They did try with some of the panelists they brought in, but I could tell that most of the conference was dismissive when they spoke.
• The generation gap. Seriously, when someone asked everyone age 25 and under to raise their hands, less than five people did: and Kay and I were two of them. Everyone laughed uncomfortably.

In sum, I wasn't surprised by the conference, I had a good time, got free stuff, and realized that I hope the romance novel as we know it will die with the baby boomers. My generation wants to see books with real representation and diversity. So maybe we'll just just go back to reading fanfiction.

We don't mind the shiny abs, though. Those can stay.

Swag.