Waves of authors announced they were stepping down from other roles in the group, or quitting the organization altogether. Others organized a petition to recall the group’s new president, Damon Suede. Some RWA members are calling on the group’s remaining leadership and some staff members to resign, as well. In a statement emailed to members on Monday, RWA’s board and staff said they were hiring an outside law firm to conduct an audit of recent events, and that the ethics complaint against Milan had been closed and she remained a member.īut for many romance writers, the damage was already done. “For the last six years we have tried to make RWA more open and inclusive and it breaks my heart that it has come to this,” tweeted another past president of the organization, Dee Davis.Īmid the backlash, RWA announced on Christmas Eve that it had “ rescinded” its vote to discipline Milan, “pending a legal opinion”. Many prominent romance authors, including past presidents of the Romance Writers of America, also spoke out in support of Milan, using the hashtag #IStandWithCourtney. The board members who resigned included black, Asian and Latinx authors, who had previously made up what had been hailed as the most racially diverse board of directors in the group’s history. The still-unfolding controversy prompted at least ten members of RWA’s board of directors, including the president, to resign. The news of Milan’s punishment sparked an uproar among romance authors and raised questions about whether some of RWA’s white members were attempting to silence or push out the group’s anti-racist activists. She was instrumental in helping RWA’s leadership recognize how the group had excluded and marginalized authors of color, particularly black authors, and in pushing the organization to change, RWA’s former executive director told The Guardian last year.Ĭourtney Milan. Milan is widely acknowledged as one of the most prominent advocates for diversity and inclusion within romance publishing, and is known for her frequent Twitter threads about racism and her behind-the-scenes work as a former member of RWA’s board of directors. RWA’s board of directors determined that Milan had “engaged in conduct injurious” to the organization, and that she would be suspended from the group for a year, and barred for life from holding a leadership position. The controversy started last week, when the Romance Writers of America, a trade association representing nearly 10,000 writers, announced it would discipline author Courtney Milan for publicly criticizing passages in Kathryn Lynn Davis’ Somewhere Lies the Moon for including harmful stereotypes about Chinese women.

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