Read Romance, Fight Patriarchy!

Read Romance, Fight Patriarchy! Host SARAH COLONNA frames the conversation thusly with romance Authors KIANNA ALEXANDER, ROSIE DANAN, JOANNA LOWELL, and ALISHA RAI. Our authors unpack the ways in which modern romance writers are reshaping what it means to write romance novels by crafting stories that are more reflective of the reality of “romance” and more inclusive of love in all its varied shapes and forms. [rsvp required; see below]

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KIANNA ALEXANDER, like any good Southern belle, wears many hats: doting mama, advice-dispensing sister, fun aunt and gabbing girlfriend. She’s a voracious reader, an amateur seamstress and occasional painter in oils.
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ROSIE DANAN writes steamy, big-hearted books, articles, and tweets about the trials and triumphs of modern love. The New York Times called her debut novel, The Roommate, “a book about people expanding into their best possible selves…warmly funny and gorgeously sexy” has been optioned for film, and a companion book The Intimacy Experiment was released this April. When not writing, Rosie enjoys jogging slowly to fast music, petting other people’s dogs, and competing against herself in rounds of Chopped using the miscellaneous ingredients occupying her fridge.
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JOANNA LOWELL lives among the fig trees in North Carolina, where she teaches in the English department at Wake Forest University. When she’s not writing historical romance, she writes collections and novels as Joanna Ruocco. Those books include Dan, Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith, The Week, and Field Glass, co-authored with Joanna Howard.
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ALISHA RAI  writes award-winning emotionally complex contemporary romance novels and is frequently sought as a speaker on a range of topics covering romance and media. She is the first author to have an indie-published book appear on Washington Post’s annual Best Books list. When she’s not writing, Alisha is traveling, tweeting or tiktoking.
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SARAH COLONNA is the Associate Faculty Chair of Grogan College at UNC Greensboro. She has an interdisciplinary background with degrees in Education, Women’s and Gender Studies, and nursing. Her research interests include teaching creatively and imaginatively using Young Adult Literature, narrative, and storytelling. She is a  life-long reader who added herself to her grandmother’s romance book circle as a teen and hasn’t stopped reading since.