Passion and Prose: A Romance Panel vol.2

Romance authors Lisa Kleypas, Beverly Jenkins, Eloisa James, and Mia Sosa discuss their work and the Romance genre with Petra Maier of NPR on 2/27/18.

P&P’s first romance panel last August attracted an enthusiastic and diverse audience, and drew admiring notice from The Washington Post, which praised the “exceptionally clever writers” and the energy they and their fans bring to a genre that has often been given less than its due. Join us for another exciting evening of readings and heartfelt discussions.

Kleypas is a RITA award-winning author of more than twenty novels, both historical romance and contemporary women’s fiction. In the fourth installment of her Ravenals series, Garrett Gibson, England’s only woman doctor, falls for Ethan Ransom, erstwhile Scotland Yard detective and rumored assassin. The two can’t resist their mutual attraction, but they may not survive it, either, as Ransom struggles to dodge a treacherous government plot.

Jenkins has won both the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for historical romance. A long-time advocate of multicultural romance, she’s set her latest novel in the Old West where Regan Carmichael is not the docile mail-order bride Dr. Colton Lee expected. Recently widowed, he’d only wanted a wife to help raise his daughter, but he soon finds himself falling for a woman more independent than any he’d dreamed of.

Writing as Eloisa James, Mary Bly, a professor of English literature at Fordham University, is the author of several series of Regency and Georgian romance novels. Her latest book is the opening volume in the Wildes of Lindow Castle cycle. The action begins with the return of the Byronesque Lord Alaric Wilde, whose adventures abroad have made him famous, if not notorious, at home. Miss Willa Ffynche, however, is immune from his charms, preferring books—but also bawdy jokes. Neither has met anyone quite like the other.

A D.C.-based writer, Sosa practiced First Amendment and media law for ten years before channeling her early aspirations to sing into writing romance novels. The first installment of her Love on Cue series follows fitness trainer Tori Alvarez on a trip to Aruba. She’s there to recover from an uncomfortably public breakup with a politician and has sworn off men for the near future. But no sooner is she on the plane than she agrees to help her charismatic seat-mate get into shape, only to rue her decision when paparazzi expose him as a famous actor who’s transforming himself for his next big role.

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Produced by Tom Warren