Christian Fiction Devourers discussion

RWA (Romance Writers of America) is a secular organization that has a category for religious romance. The website is www.rwa.org for anyone that wants to see the full list of categories.

For the Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements Category, nominees are:

At Love's Command by Karen Witemeyer


Hadley Beckett' Next Dish by Bethany Turner


Small Town Faith by Michelle Lindo-Rice and Michelle Stimpson


Stay with Me by Becky Wade


Winners will be announced July 14-17.

Have you read any of these?

I LOVED Karen Witemeyer's At Love's Command. She gets better and better with each new book! I can hardly wait for her next story.

Congratulations to Karen Witemeyer for winning this award!

Read At Love's Command and really enjoyed it. Congrats Karen Witemeyer!

So glad to see Witemeyer's book won. She's one of my favorites.

One of the many Witemeyer books on my TBR!

Some updates, the RWA rescinded the award:

https://www.rwa.org/Online/News/2021/...

Important News Regarding the 2021 VIVIAN Awards

We understand the concerns regarding the Romance with Religious and Spiritual Elements category. As a Board, we learned of the winner at the VIVIAN Ceremony, along with the rest of the membership. The board has held an emergency meeting and are in agreement that the proper remedy is to rescind the VIVIAN award for "At Love's Command."

Romance Writers of America has a long history of building bridges between authors and the publishing world. In the past, the romance writing industry has gone through rocky periods where representation of marginalized authors has been minimalized and often forgotten altogether. In 2020, RWA took on the enormous task of creating a welcoming and open atmosphere from an organization that had institutionalized barriers and prejudices. In just one year, RWA has made huge strides. We have updated our bylaws to put inclusion at the forefront of membership. We are in the process of implementing an organization-wide DEIA program. We have created mentorships and outreach to marginalized authors through an Own Voices Program and have implemented a Pen to Paper Program to assist new writers in completing their first romance novel.

The retirement of the RITA Award and the introduction of the new VIVIANS added a new judging rubric aimed toward making decisions based on the quality of the work and limiting bias. The 2021 inaugural Vivian finalists were the most diverse class in the history of RWA awards. 17% were marginalized authors in comparison to 4% in the last RITA Awards. As this is the contest's first year, we already had planned a post-award analysis of the Vivian contest framework, looking at a systematic review of the judging, the rubric and the outreach.

RWA is in full support of First Amendment rights; however, as an organization that continually strives to improve our support of marginalized authors, we cannot in good conscience uphold the decision of the judges in voting to celebrate a book that depicts the inhumane treatment of indigenous people and romanticizes real world tragedies that still affect people to this day. RWA is rescinding the Vivian awarded to the book finalist "At Love's Command."