RIRW exists to promote excellence in women’s and popular fiction, to help writers become published and build careers in their writing field, and to provide continuing support for writers within the women’s and popular fiction publishing industry. Formed in 1983 as a Romance Writers of America chapter, we disaffiliated in 1988. We are an independent, nonprofit organization in Rhode Island.
We welcome everyone, without regard to race, color, national origin, disability, religion, cultural identity, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, physical appearance, or any other identity distinction. Furthermore, we recognize that because racism, homophobia, and other forms of bias are systemic in our national culture, people from marginalized communities continue to be denied advancement in our industry. RIRW strives to address this by raising awareness within our membership and increasing our efforts to attract members from a variety of backgrounds to enrich our community of writers.
If you are serious about writing popular fiction, we invite you to join us!
We meet from September to June on the first Saturday of the month in the Hayden Center at the Cumberland Public Library in Cumberland, Rhode Island. (Because of holidays and/or activities at the library, the date or venue may change. We will announce changes here.)
12:30 p.m. General Meeting
1:30 p.m. Workshop/Speaker
We welcome Visitors. (We would appreciate a $2.00 donation at the door.) Visitors may attend up to two meetings before they need to join.
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Next Regular Meeting: June 6th
Carolyn Betensky: Details TBA (via ZOOM)
Carolyn Betensky is an English professor and translator who lives in Providence, RI. She was born in Rochester, NY but has lived in many places since then, including Paris, Tel Aviv, Toronto, New York City, and Washington, DC. She arrived in Rhode Island in 2004 to take a position at URI (which she loves). She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at all levels, mostly on Victorian novels and World Literature.
Carolyn’s first book, Feeling for the Poor: Bourgeois Compassion, Social Action, and the Victorian Novel (2010), appeared in the Victorian Literature and Culture Series of the University of Virginia Press. In 2015, Penguin Classics published the translation she co-authored with Jonathan Loesberg of Eugène Sue’s 1843 blockbuster novel The Mysteries of Paris. She is currently working on two new projects: a translation from the French of Le Bachelier (The Graduate), a novel by the great nineteenth-century author Jules Vallès, as well as a book about the compartmentalization of experience in Victorian culture.
Members, please come to the meeting and link up with old and new writing friends. We’d love to learn what each of you are working on, so encourage people to come ready to talk briefly about your current efforts.
Upcoming Meetings this season:
- 6 June