This post contains affiliate links for Bookshop.org where possible. It's a great way support our work! Children of the 70s, 80s, and 90s will always shudder when the words "A Very Special Episode" are mentioned, because nothing fun typically followed when our favorite sitcom got serious for a week or two. Mention the name Gordon Jump, or Mr. Horton…

It's the final episode of season one of Black Romance Has A History, and thank goodness we've gotten to the definitive history and impact of 1994, The Summer of Black Love. Or have we??? This week, Steve and Nicole grapple with the questions of impact and legacy, and the ways in which history isn't that easy to encapsulate. Was 1994 a revolution fo…

Our final interview for this season is with Nicole Falls, self-published author of more than twenty Black romance novels. Nicole is a Chicago native, podcaster, editor, and a staunch supporter of Black romance. Her most recent release is Excess Baggage and she’s recently soft-launched Black Romance University. In this episode, we talk to Nicole as …

This week’s guest is Piper G. Huguley. Piper is a professor of literature at Clark University Atlanta in addition to being an author of historical romance and historical fiction. Most recently she is the author of American Daughters. We invited Piper for her unique perspective as both a scholar of 19th and 20th century African American literature a…

This week's guest is the one and only Beverly Jenkins. Ms. Bev, as she's known in romance circles, broke onto the scene in 1994 with her historical romance Night Song. She was Avon’s first Black romance author and the first mainstream published Black historical romance author. Her love of research and uncovering stories of Black history has earned …

This week's guest is Margie Walker. Her second book, A Sweet Refrain, was part of the second month of the Arabesque line alongside Beguiled by Eboni Snoe. She talks with us about her early days as a writer, the community of Black romance authors that formed in the early 1990s, what projects she's been up to in the years since as a screenwriter, and…

Thanks again to Steven Zacharius for joining us for a great conversation about the history of Kensington Publishing Corp. and Arabesque in particular. The launch of Arabesque was greeted with fanfare by Romantic Times, including this great cover: The profile article inside includes interviews with launch authors Sandra Kitt, Francis Ray, and editor…

This week we're looking at the cultural context in which the Summer of Black Love happened, both within the romance genre and out in the real world. We get into race, class, the US economy and why Reagan is still to blame, colorist, respectability politics, and the classic 1994 film Jason's Lyric. We told you it was going to get nerdy! Make sure to…

For romance publishing, 1994 was The Summer of Black Love. 1994 was a banner year for Black romance, with more books with Black main characters published in a single year than in any year prior. This week we'll introduce ourselves and set the syllabus for the season. Your hosts for this wild ride are Nicole Jackson and Steve Ammidown, two friends, …