2018 RWA Academic Research Grant Winner

The RWA have just tweeted

Congratulations to Professor Margo Hendricks of UC Santa Cruz who has been awarded the 2018 RWA Academic Research Grant for her project, “Heliodorus’ Daughters: Women of Color and the Romance Industry.” https://t.co/beSwo8yKPI

— RWA (@romancewriters) 14 March 2018

Further details of the project are provided on their website:

Margo Hendricks, UC Santa Cruz
Heliodorus' Daughters: Women of Color and the Romance Industry

RWA awarded funding to Professor Emerita Margo Hendricks to carry out field research for her book project titled Heliodorus’ Daughters: Women of Color and the Romance Industry on the relationship between women of color and the romance genre.

In case anyone's wondering about the title of the project, I'm pretty sure it refers to an ancient Greek romance:

The Romance novel didn't begin with Kathleen Woodiwiss or even with the Bronte sisters. By the time Heliodorus wrote his Aethiopica—or Ethiopian Romance—in the third century, the genre was already impressively developed. Heliodorus launches his tale of love and the quirks of fate with a bizarre scene of blood, bodies, and booty on an Egyptian beach viewed through the eyes of a band of mystified pirates. The central love-struck characters are Charicles, the beautiful daughter of the Ethiopian queen, and Theagenes, a Thessalian aristocrat. The story unfolds with all the twists and devices any writer would employ today, with the added attractions of dreams, oracles, and exotic locales in the ancient Mediterranean and Africa. (University of Pennsylvania Press)