Romancelandia began buzzing this morning when The Ripped Bodice introduced the creation of a brand new award. The Ripped Bodice Awards for Excellence in Romantic Fiction shall be sponsored by Sony Image Tv, with whom the sister co-owners of the shop have a improvement deal. Every year, 1–12 romance authors shall be honored. Every will obtain a prize of $1,000 with a further $100 donated to the charity of their selection. Award winners shall be introduced on Valentine’s Day, due to course.
Of the choice to ascertain these new awards, co-owner Leah Koch mentioned: “We create one thing once we really feel that there’s something distinctive that we will contribute to a bigger dialog. On this occasion, different genres have a number of awards given every year, and we felt romance ought to as effectively. We would like these awards to acknowledge greatness and be thought of a mark of status (that’s a giant a part of why we felt it was so necessary to have a money prize).”
The books honored shall be chosen by a panel of 16 judges comprised of romance authors and consultants, together with bloggers, podcasters, booksellers, journalists, and librarians. Together with the the Ripped Bodice Homeowners, Leah and Bea Koch, this yr’s judges embody Corey Alexander, Robin Bradford, Ana Coqui, Mina V. Esguerra, Ashley C. Ford, Jaime Inexperienced, Jayashree Kamblé, Maureen Lee Lenker, Cole McCade, Nichole Perkins, Olivia Waite, Sarah Wendell, E-book Riot contributing editor Jessica Pryde, and E-book Riot contributor Silvana Reyes.
Discussing how they put collectively this spectacular panel, Leah mentioned: “It was extraordinarily necessary to us to place collectively a bunch of judges that characterize the romance business and readership. Due to actuality and info, meaning it consists of folks of shade, queer folks, and folks with totally different gender identities and sexualities.We really suppose we’ve assembled an all star group and can’t wait to see the listing they provide you with.”
This isn’t the primary time that Leah and Bea Koch have used their retailer and platform to advocate for the romance style, which is on the similar time one of many bestselling e book classes and some of the disrespected. And other than arguing for the style to obtain extra respect from the literary world, they’ve additionally labored laborious to champion extra range throughout the style. This work is clear by means of the alternatives on their cabinets, their annual report on the state of racial range inside romance publishing, and the varied group of judges they’ve assembled for this award.
With the persevering with controversy over the continued whiteness of the RITA awards, the information of a brand new romance award with a dedication to range is very welcome. Regardless, it’s thrilling to have one other method to rejoice and assist new readers uncover the work of fantastic writers throughout the style. And now, romance fanatics have a complete new cause to look ahead to subsequent Valentine’s Day!
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