Breakout session 1: The Selkie Song

Juliet Marillier – The Selkie Song Elemental lore and creatures In folklore and mythology, each element – earth, air, fire, water- has its share of uncanny beings. Elements in a subsistence culture People were dependent on the elements for survival – flood, fire, landslide or storm could wipe out a settlement, sink a fishing fleet, destroy […]

RWA conference Day 1 – Paths to Third Party Publication Panel Discussion

Alex Adsett (moderator), Abby Zidle (Simon & Schuster NY), Nina Bruhns (Entangled Publishing), Sheila Hudgson (Harlequin Mulls & Boon London), Bernadette Foley (Hachette Publishing), Kate Cuthbert (Escape Publishing), Alisa Krasnostein (Twelth Planet Press) Kate:  Escape – Harlequin’s digital first imprint.  Looking for riskier titles, niche titles, cross genre, also traditional romance.  Submit via website, agented […]

RWA Conference Day 1: Harlequin Sponsors address

Margaret Marbury (Vice President, Harlequin Single Title – HQN, Mira, Luna) and Sheila Hodgson (HMB London) – signed more than 40 new series authors this year – global writing contest ‘so you think you can write’ – Think Support – start to finish support – end to end career support – last year launched Harlequin […]

RWA Conference day 1: Keynote address: Julia Quinn

Julia Quinn gave the opening keynote address. Dream:  to be an organised person – some people can live in glorious chaos and yet put their hands on everything instantly.  She is not one of those people. – when she loses something, is forced to clean in order to find it – having a ‘To Do’ […]

Romance, Romantic Love, and the ‘want of a fortune’

Helen Fordham (Notre Dame University) and Barbara Milech (Curtain University) – Romance, Romantic Love, and the ‘want of a fortune’ – Contemporary popular romance has a generic history – it is anchored in the rise of the novel – like the 18th century novel, popular romance purveys bourgeois assumptions and values in regard to women, […]

Sex and Sensibility: The pursuit and recognition of reality through analysis of romance fiction in popular culture

Bridget Ransome (University of South Australia) – Sex and Sensibility:  The pursuit and recognition of reality through analysis of romance fiction in popular culture – The notion of ‘culture’ is often applied to such things as classical works of literature, music and the arts, with the term ‘cultured’ considered applicable to an elite level within […]

Destabilising Divides and Re-imagining Subjectives: The Romance of Eloisa James

Helen Fordham (Notre Dame University) – Destabilising Divides and Re-imagining Subjectives:  The Romance of Eloisa James First of all, there was a session between Jennifer Kloester’s Heyer panel and this one. Dr Rachel Robertson of Curtin University did a presentation called Counting on love?: mental illness and romantic engagement in Toni Jordan’s Addition.  It was […]

Writing History, reflecting history: Georgette Heyer’s Recency Novels in Context

Dr Jennifer Kloester (University of Melbourne) –  Writing History, reflecting history:  Georgette Heyer’s Recency Novels in Context b 1902 d 1974 – has never been out of print since 1919 (The Black Moth) – changing perceptions of her work – her own, publisher, reader – 20th century woman with Edwardian perceptions – wrote novels in […]

Swashbuckling girls and foppish men: the unusual pleasures of Georgette Heyer’s Regency Romances

Jade Armstrong (Curtain University) –  Swashbuckling girls and foppish men:  the unusual pleasures of Georgette Heyer’s Regency Romances Jane is a lecturer at Curtain University.  Her PhD thesis and research interests focus on adolescent femininity and popular culture, and one of the things that interests her about Heyer books is how they belong to the […]

Exploring women and modalities of power in fiction: escaping the straightjacket of genre into digital space

Dr Lynn Allen  – Exploring women and modalities of power in fiction:  escaping the straightjacket of genre into digital space – when a subject is highly controvertial, one cannot hope to tell the truth.  One can only hope to show how one came to hold one’s own opinion – Virginia Woolf Modalities of Power – […]