RWA Files for Bankruptcy
Romance Writers of America filed for bankruptcy in May 2024 in the Southern District of Texas. The RWA was unable to pay the hotel contracts for their annual conferences after membership plummeted following a series of high-profile controversies. The RWA owes about $3 million to hotels, and almost $75,000 to other creditors.
The main cause of the fiscal problems is a long-term contract RWA signed with Marriott Hotels to host their conferences in 2018. The pandemic, combined with declining membership, made those contracts untenable as conference attendance plunged, and the RWA was unable to renegotiate terms.
The RWA has suffered numerous public relations and organizational blows since 2019, with accusations of racism among the officers and membership, leading to the resignation of theleadership in 2020 and the retirement of the RITA Awards, which were rebranded as the Vivian Awards in honor of Vivian Stephens, the pioneering Black romance writer who founded the RWA in 1980. (One of the first Vivian Awards given in 2020 was rescinded after objections from the membership regarding problematic content in the winning title.) In the midst of the controversy, publishers dropped out of the conferences, and membership plunged from about 10,000 members to around 2,000 from 2019 to 2024. Court filings by RWA president Mary Ann Jock blame the loss of members on “disputes concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues between some members of a prior RWA board and others in the larger romance writing community.”
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