Black Romance Podcast

Margo Hendricks who writes romance novels as Elysabeth Grace joins me to close out Season one of the Black Romance Podcast. We discuss her contemporary and paranormal romance novels as well as our forthcoming editorial collaboration on a special issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, which will focus on Black Romance. This issue will include all of the transcripts from my interviews on Season one of the podcast along with essays from several well-known romance writers and scholars.

Margo Hendricks is University of California emerita professor of English literature. As Margo Hendricks, she is the co-editor of Women, 'Race,' and Writing in the Early Modern Period, with Patricia Parker, and the author of many journal articles. Her current works in progress are an academic memoir and Heliodorus' Daughters: Black Women and the Romance Industry.

Writing as Elysabeth Grace she has a contemporary novel titled Your Heart Only and a four-book paranormal series titled Daughters of Saria, which includes the books:

Fate's Match

Fate's Kiss

Fate's Consort

And the forthcoming Lilith's Heart.

Rochelle Alers and I talked about a number of topics: her experiences writing and publishing romance in the 1980's; and we talked about books and characters from her Hideaway, Cavanaugh Island, and The Innkeepers series. She also discussed her work with Vivian Stephens on the Women Writers of Color group, her experiences with RWA, and with Black women editors and writers who she believes have contributed to her success.

This week Gwendolyn Pough (writing as Gwyneth Bolton) and I discuss her popular romance fiction Make It Last Forever and Sweet Sensation. We also discuss whether her academic publications on Black feminism and Hip-Hop culture influence her romance fiction.

Rebekah Weatherspoon discusses the importance of depicting Black women in her books, writing inclusive novels that feature queer love stories with Black characters, and her experiences self-publishing and publishing with Dafina, a traditional press.

This week Alyssa Cole and I discuss how her precocious childhood reading habits may have influenced her current romance publications. Cole also reveals how her historical and contemporary romance like Let it Shine, An Extraordinary Union, An Unconditional Freedom, A Princess in Theory, and A Duke by Default work through, try to understand, and trouble particular aspects of U.S. culture, history, and politics.

This week's conversation with Vivian Stephens focuses on several topics: her work at Dell; her transition as editor from Dell to Harlequin; Harlequin's release of her; her subsequent work with Black romance writers; marketing an all-Black line of Vivian Stephens romance; and her own publication Second Act.

In part one of my interview with Vivian Stephens, she discusses her experiences as an editor at Dell Publishing, and she talks about her role in the founding of The Romance Writers of America.

In this conversation, Beverly Jenkins and I talk about her early experiences as a Black woman writing and trying to publish her historical romance featuring Black characters. We also discuss Night Song, her debut novel, Indigo, Jewel, and Forbidden, her historical novels set in the late 1800's.

Having published over one hundred and twenty-five novels, Jackson talks about the importance of how Blackness is represented in media and popular culture and about how this led her into filmmaking.

New York Times best-selling writer Brenda Jackson recounts the challenges she faced publishing romance fiction with black characters in the 1980's and why she negotiated her own contract to publish her first novel in 1995.