Tossing out the Ritas by Cheryl Bolen

I was outraged this week when I received a communication from an organization I’ve been committed to for three decades, the Romance Writers of America. The new replacement board—after the organization’s entire board resigned at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020—decided to scrap our Rita awards and rename them the Vivian.

Membership was not consulted about this move. 

The Rita has been for more than 30 years the romance writers’ equivalent of the Oscars. It’s even a gold statuette of an elegant lady in a long dress, and the winning books are voted upon by peers. It’s the highest possible honor, imo, that a romance author could ever attain. Like the Oscars, it’s presented at a gala ceremony at the national group’s annual conference with many hundreds of onlookers. Most the honorees coming swishing up to the stage in long formal gowns.

It’s a really big deal.

It’s About White and Black

The original Rita award was named after two of the RWA’s six founders, Rita Clay Estrada and her mother, Rita Gallagher, who both happened to be white.

RWA’s new board thinks the award should have been named after another of the organization’s founders, Vivian Stephens, who is black.

I believe the board’s rationale is that they perceive the Rita contest has discriminated against women of color. No African American had ever received a Rita until 2019, when two different winners were African Americans.

Apparently, this new board wants to completely revamp the award by throwing out everything about it to make it more inclusive to women of color.

The topic of inclusion is not being addressed in this blog.

Erasing History in One Fell Swoop

My gripe is that this board has wiped away the award’s prestige which had been painstakingly built over a period of 30 years. Publishers had come to slap “Rita Winning Author” or “Rita Finalist” on book covers. Publishers and agents alike had come to recognize that authors who had been nominated for Ritas were authors of the highest caliber. And authors, like me, who had never won a Rita have long aspired to one day wear a title like “Rita Winner” or “Rita Nominee” or to walk up on that stage and collect the award in front of our peers.

It had taken a number of years for the industry to recognize the importance of the Ritas, but it had come to be a meaningful award in the romance publishing industry. The award gave credulity to a genre that had gotten a negative reputation for many years.

Think about renaming the Oscars the Hatties after Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar. 

Perhaps because I write historical novels, I’m a huge advocate of history and tradition. I don’t like changing either. I’m angry that this new board has slapped in the face all those talented authors who have earned Ritas during the last three decades.—Cheryl Bolen’s June 1^st release is the Christmas novella, One Room at the Inn, which appeared in last year’s USA Today bestselling anthology titled Winter Wishes. This is the first time her novella has been for sale in English as a solo title.

"A Cup o' Kindness..." by Liz Flaherty #RomanceGems

It is the last day of a tumultuous year.

I'm tired of tumultuous years.

For the second year in a row, I lost a brother. As happens a lot with adult siblings, we didn't see each other that much. We didn't agree on much. We didn't always like each other. But he was a person I loved every day of my life until the day he left it. He loved me back. That's a hard thing to lose.

RWA has been "the home place" for me for over 20 years. Even when I no longer belonged to a chapter, I still paid my national dues. I loved so much about it. I loved RWR. I loved that so many questions were answered, that so much was done over the years for authors, that it was a sisterhood to end all sisterhoods. I didn't love it all the time, though, and I didn't love everything about it, and this past weekend I resigned. I'm glad I did. It was time. The organization and I no longer did anything for each other. I felt, I told someone, as if I was deserting a sinking ship. I think I may have been, but the truth was that it was no longer my ship and there was no room for me on board.

Writing has been...haphazard this year. I've had splendid days when I've written some of my best stuff ever. I've also had more awful days than usual, when all I've accomplished is 12 words and 43 games of Solitaire. A book I expected to do well hasn't exactly jumped off Amazon. A proposal I loved wasn't accepted.

Friendships have changed. Some have gone away completely. I miss those friends and them being non-responsive has left a blank spot I'm not sure  how to fill up. I wonder what I did or didn't do even when common sense tells me I didn't do anything wrong. It was probably just time.

In some cases, it was probably political. Not only do we have different views, we can't even argue them civilly. I can't bear that I really never knew those people; I'm certain they feel the same way about me.

But now it's the end of the day. The year. The decade. But, actually, for me, those things are incidental. What really matters--again, for me--is that my family's alive and well and hilarious and that the man I've been married to for 48 years is still the man I'm married to. Not that my brothers died, but that they lived. And that even though it is the end of all those things I listed, it's the beginning of a whole bunch of others. And tomorrow, say Scarlett and I, is another day. (She may have said it first. And better.)

Happy New Year and blessings to you all. I wish you all a cup o' kindness.

Oh, and while you're here, it's the last day to enter the December giveaway. Go ahead--we'll wait!

Monthly Giveaway page features our December promotion, CANDY CANE KISSES. Enter here: Monthly Rafflecopter Prizes