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CC BY-SA A major transformation is underway in Romancelandia. Once upon a time, romance novels from major U.S. publishers featured only heterosexual couples. Today, the five biggest publishers regularly release same-sex love stories. From May 2022 to May 2023, sales of LGBTQ+ romance grew by 40%, with the next biggest jump in this period occurring for general adult fiction, which grew just 17%. The data from 2023 extends a boom that began in 2016: In the five years from May 2016 to May 2021, sales of LGBTQ+ romance grew by a jaw-dropping 740%. It’s tem...... Read Full article on HadNews

As poets have demonstrated for centuries, a sonnet for your beloved never goes out of style. The gift of verse may carry extra cachet this Valentine’s Day, on the heels of Taylor Swift’s announcement that her next album is poetry-themed. But in carrying out my research on Renaissance literature and gender, I’ve been struck by how many of that period’s love poems were not for lovers. These sonnets, composed for friends and family, are not just beautiful; they’re also a reminder that love and Valentine’s Day aren’t exclusively for couples. The love sonnet is born The sonnet was invented in 12th century Italy as a 14-line poem with 11...... Read Full article on HadNews

“Time — a few centuries here or there — means very little in the world of poems.” There is something reassuring about Mary Oliver’s words. Especially in an era of rapid change, there is comfort to be had in those things that move slowly. But oceans rise and mountains fall; nothing stays the same. Not even the way poetry is made. The disappearance of the author in 20th-century literary criticism can perhaps be traced back to the surrealist movement and its game of “exquisite corpse.” The surrealists believed that a poem can emerge not only from the unconscious mind of an individual, but from the collective mind of many individuals working in ...... Read Full article on HadNews