The 2019 Rita awards for romance writing have been pulled after more than 300 books were withdrawn from competition in protest
The US’s most prestigious awards for romance writing, the Ritas, have been cancelled after a host of judges and entrants pulled out over an ongoing racism row involving the industry’s largest trade group, the Romance Writers of America.
As of Tuesday morning, more than 300 books had been withdrawn from the contest by authors who were critical of the RWA’s recent decision to discipline romance author Courtney Milan over her public criticism of passages in Kathryn Lynn Davis’s Somewhere Lies the Moon. Milan, a longtime critic of racism in the romance industry, had called Davis’s novel a “racist mess” for its depictions of Chinese women; Davis and her fellow romance novelist Suzan Tisdale responded by filing formal ethics complaints with the RWA, alleging Milan was a “bully” who had hurt their careers.
Related: Fifty shades of white: the long fight against racism in romance novels
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