Tag: romance

• coercive worlds

  How do we dream freedom from a world that orders our dreaming?  I’ve been really stuck on a concept from this summer, introduced to me by Johanna Kluger, one of the panelists at the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance’s (IASPR) 2025 conference: the idea of coercive worldbuilding. Kluger, in her research, traces…

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• it happened one autumn

  After all, “research” can be just walking around in the world with your eyes open. Collecting snippets of the world—or interviews, photos, art—and putting them together in ways that mean.  — Arianne Zwartjes, Autotheory as Rebellion I found a book today in a Little Free Library that matched my outfit. It Happened One Autumn, Lisa…

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• defining the feminist subjunctive

  So, what the heck is the feminist subjunctive, anyway? In writing my senior thesis, I am cobbling together a close reading methodology called the “feminist subjunctive,” inspired by a lovely friend of mine who introduced me to the term. My research aims to explore the ways in which contemporarily written historical romance fiction featuring non-normative…

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• on cold mothers

  Cold mothers are an archetype. We see them in a lot of regency or historical fiction media. Think of shows like Bridgerton or My Lady Jane, or books like Persuasion. They are, for the most part, entirely unlikeable. Cold, unaffectionate, sharp. Their tongues cut like swords and their lives are meticulous.  I happen to love…

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• time, folding

  I lived abroad last fall. It feels weird writing that, because it feels like it’s still happening and also like it never happened at all. But I did it, and it felt like a time away from time, a space waiting for me in the requiem of my dreams. It felt removed from reality, a…

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