Greetings from me, and my blood pressure medication.
RWA has filed for bankruptcy, per a Bloomberg story that is behind a paywall.
The URL alone is enough to give me a stroke, so I’m sharing that over the headline:
I’m sharing the URL straight because the part after the date, called the “slug,” is the part that made the top of my head blow clean off.
So what actually happened?
Most likely: With years of terrible conference hotel contracts booked into the future, something attendees and even board members complained openly about to me as far back as 2017, and an utterly disgraceful handling of a single ethics complaint that led to the mass exodus of membership and disaffiliation of many major chapters of RWA, the organization has filed for bankruptcy.
But no, we need something snappy. Something that will get clicks!
DEI? Courtney Milan?
No, y’all. Just no.
You can read the bankruptcy filing here if you’re interested.
If you’re new, or weren’t part of romance at that time, and you’re wondering why the attempt to blame DEI, which is utter horseshit, here’s a very brief recap. On December 23, 2019, RWA suspended Courtney Milan after an ethics complaint.
Shit went very, very sideways after that. Board members resigned, including every single board member of color. Then the president, Carolyn Jewel, resigned, followed by full-time staff members, and finally president Damon Suede resigned as well.
I wrote about some of the ongoing problems with RWA, and then in February, after doing a four-part podcast series about what had happened, I resigned from RWA.
Along with apparently MANY MANY thousands of other people per their own bankruptcy filing who ALSO left the organization.
But sure, blame the one person of color. Sure. It wasn’t the visible racism, and alienation of membership by hamfisted leadership.
And many other people wrote about the particular and actual why RWA imploded, including the impeccable Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel. The racism and structural bigotry was baked in. They had (and apparently still have) a problem reckoning with how the organization and its leadership wasn’t equipped or willing to advocate on behalf of everyone in their membership.
But sure, it’s this one person’s fault.
(I’m a little incensed here, folks.)
They even cite DEI in their filing!
Subsequently, predominantly due to disputes concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues between some members of a prior RWA board and others in the larger romance writing community, membership decreased to approximately 3,000. Due to COVID concerns, the Debtor held its annual conference virtually in 2020 and 2021, and subsequently its membership reduced further. RWA was able to postpone its obligations to the respective Conference Centers these two years by agreeing to add two future years to the applicable Conference Center Contract to 2028.
First: this is some Performative Bullshit. If I understand correctly, a bankruptcy court judge is not likely to care why they’re filing. This is all smoke and distraction, performative bullshit pandering, and also, deeply irresponsible.
Second: Courtney Milan is not to blame here. I don’t know why that needs to be said but it’s easy to blame a person of color (and collect clicks, if you’re into shoddy headline and slug writing) than to own up how the massive mismanagement of a six-month disgrace and prior examples of institutional bias alongside a conference contract set that choked them may have left the organization in a precarious position financially.
It is APPALLING that on their way down the final swirl of the toilet bowl, the organization had to point blame anywhere but itself, and specifically mention DEI so that one person now has to manage a LOT of sudden public attention, which she has said on the record has not been and will not be great for her mental and physical health.
Why? Why would you do that except to be performative and cruel? Is the racism that profitable? Clearly not, they’re bankrupt.
The racism is the problem. The racism is always the problem, and it’s not the fault of the person or people who point it out.
I am so fucking angry and appalled. Good thing I have a blog so I know where to put all that rage.
Oh, that is so incredibly gross. I remember when all that went down and it was a total dumpster fire. But did we expect better? They didn’t learn before and they haven’t learned in the aftermath, it seems.
Kinda makes me want to buy a Courtney Milan book, just to show her some love and dolla dolla bills, y’all (and also maybe thumb my nose a bit at RWA).
WtAF?????
*flames*
Courtney Milan has a lovely newsletter about tea – I’m not especially a tea drinker, but she writes so well, it lifts my heart when it arrives. (And clearly, RWA has made and continues to make terrible decisions, with repercussions for others.)
Just WTF?
I have no other words.
WTAF?
I’m taking a moment to let the steam completely discharge from my ears. Dumping on DEI is the same old bullshit wrapped up in a new cloth. Consider the professional football player who recently spent his entire commencement speech to a high school graduating class spewing misogyny, homophobia, racism, and blaming all of what he perceives as society’s problems on DEI. It must be so hard for right-wingers to keep up with all the people, ideas, outlooks, and beliefs they’re supposed to hate, but somehow they manage it. God help us.
Picking the worst possible hill and dying on it. Unbelievable.
BLAME RWA’S Texan roots. Tara Taylor Quinn’s disastrous RWA conference where OJ was the only POC face in the celebration slide show. Nazi lovestory winning inspirational winning (which I believe was the second problematic inspirational). The s***y consultant advice that lost a huge number of chapters because the rules were untenable. Not adjusting to changing market.
BUT let’s use a the current conservative dog whistle. RWA confused itself with a country club instead of organization to nurture writers.
If it’s possible to dig a hole, bury one’s self and put the nails in your own coffin, RWA has for decades
@HeatherS I totally agree, gonna go buy something from Courtney right now. I encourage all romance readers to support Courtney by either buying a book, or checking one (or many!) out from the library. If she gets a lot of circulation, the libraries will be encouraged to buy more of her books.
My personal favorite headline so far on this is from US News & World Report: “US Romance Writers’ Group Seeks Loving Embrace of Bankruptcy Court”
Batter up for a solid round of the old Romance in the Media Drinking Game: we’ve got ‘bodice’ ‘Fabio’ ‘affairs of the heart’ in the first few paragraphs alone of the US News article.
While this organization was fatally flawed, what is out there as a better replacement? I don’t hear about romance awards or conferences or organizations like the one this group and past ones had in terms of reach besides local groups. If you all know of ones, feel free to share!
I was one of the masses departing. I think it was in the winter of 2019, right before Covid, when all the crap went BOOM and I said, enough. Cannot be fixed. DOA. DNR. I don’t think there was a way to fix it given the infrastructure was still bound up in the NWL drama. I thought then, and still do, that the only way to re-do the organization in what it needed to be was to start from the ground up.
@SB Sarah: Fabio? Bodice? In an article written in 2024? Hey U.S. News—the 1980s called; they want their romance cliches back!
@Ms. M: I have not found or heard of a viable replacement for RWA as a romance writers’ conference. There are many fan cons now, and smaller regional writers’ conferences, but the impact and community of RWA Nationals was unique, and probably not replaceable. There are a number of things about RWA that aren’t replaceable, in fact, including that they used to have dedicated reps at Meta/Facebook and at Amazon. People who would answer the phone when called, and could help with member issues on an individual level. That advocacy is gone. The conference as a place of community education and creativity was often superb and life changing for writers, I think, and I’ll be stunned if there’s ever a replacement.
Well, taking that headline at face value–Kudos to Courtney Milan for singlehandedly bringing down the RWA! I imagine Courtney with a swashbuckling sword, calling out “DEI, foes!” (Admittedly, Bloomberg readers aren’t likely to have the same take on it that I do.)
WE ARE ALL TEAM COURTNEY.
I’M deeply appreciative of SBTB’s truth telling during this awful, white supremacist fiasco.
New group with new awards by SBTB – I would contribute to a kickstarter for that! Sarah – lead the charge into a world full of DEI and ‘Woke’ please!
What a load of crock. I was here for the whole fiasco. Of course, DEI is the enemy in TX, just like it is here in FL, where our AG has decided to go after Starbucks for their DEI practices. (Probably because our GOV has hopes of getting a job in Trump’s regime since he flamed out in the primaries.)
I see they’re filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means they’re not going away, just trying to get out from under their debt load and break their convention contracts. I didn’t click through to look at the filing itself, but I’d be surprised if they had any assets other than the rights to their name and their member list. Not sure if you can file amicus briefs on bankruptcy proceedings if you’re not a creditor (IANAL). But it would be interesting to see them, if so.
@Dawn Summer, there are no words to express how dogawful that awards ceremony was. I had to leave, because I couldn’t take another minute of it…and that was after closing my eyes and plugging my ears between the actual awards.
They served dinner before the ceremony (the only time they did in the 15+ times I was at the conference). All the nominees had to precede the audience into the hall, and as they were walking out of the dining room, everyone else stood up and applauded. That was a beautiful moment.
I miss the big conference, almost entirely because it gave me a chance to spend time with people I really like, talking writing, being complete scribbling geeks. At the same time, I’m frankly glad RWA has gone down in a flaming wreck. The way they took an unnecessary swipe at Courtney Milan and DEI in the filing just confirms my belief that racism was in its DNA, despite Vivian Stephens being one of its founders.
For what it’s worth, bankruptcy is a unique area of law that is narrowly focused on certain things. Can they break unfavorable contracts/leases, yes. Can they unload some debt, yes. Get more time to pay debt, yes. RWA can whine publicly about whatever they want, but the bankruptcy court doesn’t care how they ended up there. The only place this stuff should show up, at least in my district, in is in its proposed plan of reorganization when discussing the business history, and perhaps the cash collateral motion, again, discussing company history. But for the most part, no one in the court is going to care. Of course this is Texas, so maybe Judges run their courts a little different.
You can’t tell from the docket if the case was filed on an emergency basis or not. I’m guessing yes as most are. So that means we could only access the list of the 20 largest unsecured creditors, attached to the petition, and a partial secured creditor list in the cash collateral motion.
I so want to download the pleadings but need to think of a reason that my firm would ok to do so. I’m guessing that this will be very typical, and very boring though.
@SB Sarah, sounds like there is a vacuum that needs to be filled. Maybe starting with a mini-conference hosted by SBTB?!
IAAL (pretty much retired), and just to clear away some underbrush on which some discarded bodices appear to be hanging, thus inspiring the USNews piece:
Bankruptcy Judge Norman not only won’t care about the “real” motivation for filing, he’s not allowed to based on this filing, which is based upon prospective inability to pay executory — that is, not yet fulfilled — contracts. The nature of the debts matters. Bankruptcy is (or is supposed to be) about the orderly processing of debts so that creditors fight over the insufficient assets all in one place without bloodshed or “extrajudicial seizures.” It’s not about the “justice” of seeking bankruptcy protections.
The real winners are going to be the various bankruptcy lawyers, because they get paid first — before any of the creditors (except part of employee pay, but this petition claims no employees).
The next possibility for “real news” is after a hearing scheduled for early July on RWA’s motion to reject the Marriott future contracts. There’s plenty of possibility for posturing before then, though!
During the three months that RWA leadership was averaging two very public, very avoidable mistakes a day (Jan 2020-March 2020), more than one Romance Author SAID the 2020 conference pre-bookings would bankrupt RWA. Because with every mistake, they lost members.
The ONLY reason they stayed afloat was Covid giving them an “out of jail” card. Daring now to claim it was DEI?
It’s like Damon Suede claiming the Investigation cleared him. “This sign can’t stop me because I can’t read” energy.
Infuriating! Courtenay Milan was mistreated and would not stand for it, and her bravery caused an avelanche of others who decided they could not longer put up with it either.
And now they are trying to blame HER for the consequences of their long running actions? How dare they.
You have got to be kidding me?! Why am I surprised?
This is insane! They have sent me multiple emails this month asking me to return as a judge for this year’s Vivian Awards. As if I would! The last time I “judged” I did two rounds of judging and they either forgot about me (most likely) or got pissed when I complained on twitter about the terrible racist white saviour novel that won. Good riddance to them. I’m just bummed I won’t be able to cite them anymore in the cyclical argument of “do romance novels need a happy ending?” !
Thanks for your continuing and thorough, no-BS coverage of these issues.
That’s a new low. And for the record, Courtney Milan writes some of the most amazing historical romance on the market and everyone looking for something spectacular to read as they discover HistRom should check out her books. RWA was luck to have her.
I have no words fit to print, just a string of obscenities.
Great. They continue to be morally bankrupt and are capping it with financial bankruptcy.
Coverage from The Guardian, confirming that RWA is not rolling itself into a ditch at dead of night as it should.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/30/romance-writers-america-bankruptcy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
All those members left, not to mention many, many local groups, including all but 1 or 2 in Canada.
The absolute GALL of this is incredible, but honestly, not surprising. RWA shows it’s a trash organization to the last.
Olivia Waite has a good, long thread about the absolute mess the RWA was before everything hit the fan: https://twitter.com/O_Waite/status/1228385649981444096
I just cannot believe it——except, of course I can, because this was my RWA experience from my first interaction with my local chapter (“I don’t think Men can really be bisexual,”) to being on the forums and reading the newsletter after finally deciding to sign up and try and help, to the time they suggested AMY FREAKING LANE on a conference call I was on about “how to write diversity well” and… No. Just… No.
Good riddance to bad, racist rubbish.
My feeling on the subject (not a member for many years) is that they kept smacking groups who did have interesting insights into romance one by one until there weren’t enough members left.
A few folks have mentioned Courtney Milan’s very lovely newsletter about tea and other miscellany. If you’d like to subscribe, here is the link to the signup form.
[…] Some former RWA members said they disagreed with the idea that “DEI” was to blame for the group’s membership drop, with one prominent romance blogger calling the claim “utter horseshit”. […]
FFS. Who came out of their hidey hole to drop those bon mots? Who is even left? Here’s hoping they have they day they deserve. #AlwaysTeamCourtney
The gasp I just gusped. I got INTO romance because my husband (avid Twitter user he was) was deep into the gossip around this online. It’s nice to see the trash take itself out, but it doesn’t surprise me that it makes a stink along the way.
Thanks for the good suggestion to pick up some Courtney Milan backlist titles. RWA’s mud-slinging toward her since 2020 has been the stuff of nightmares. I bought The Marquis Who Mustn’t. As soon as the Seattle Public Library is able to restore access to e-books, I’ll check out the Worth Saga for a re-read.