Generous Press, a new imprint of independent publisher Row House Publishing devoted to diverse romance, will mark its debut with Someplace Generous: An Inclusive Romance Anthology (May). Devoted to romance with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disability-focused content, Generous is distributed by Simon & Schuster, and anticipates publishing one to three books annually for the first few years.
Publisher Elaina Ellis and deputy publisher Amber Flame established Generous Press to “envision into the future,” Flame said. “What world do I want to live in? What world am I building towards? I see this idea of bringing Black and brown voices, queer voices, disabled voices to see themselves represented in stories as a love interest.” In Generous Press’s call for submissions, Ellis and Flame write: “We want to read about fat couples, trans protagonists, non-monogamous romance, butch-on-butch, multilingual romance, abolitionist romance. This is where we find ourselves reflected in a story where we don’t die! We’re not the sidekick or punchline or villain.”
Against commonplace expectations, Ellis and Flame come to romance from the presumed loftier domain of poetry. An editor at Copper Canyon Press from 2012–2022, Ellis helped to acquire Ocean Vuong’s debut and worked closely with Jericho Brown, Victoria Chang, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She’s now a freelance editorial consultant based in Bellingham, Wash. Flame, a former Hugo House writer-in-residence whose latest poetry collection is apocrifa (Red Hen Press), directs Hedgebrook, the retreat center on Whidbey Island and a space for women-identified writers. Ellis and Flame met 20 years ago at Bent, a now-defunct but fondly remembered nonprofit queer writing group in Seattle, which was established by poet Tara Hardy. They’ve been in cahoots ever since, as friends and cocreators.
From the outset, Ellis and Flame envisioned Generous as an imprint under the umbrella of a larger independent publishing house. “My instinct was that we didn’t have the financial capacity to fund something, so imprint partnering with an existing organization made sense,” Ellis said.
Impressed by Row House founder Rebekah Borucki’s commitment to diverse authors and transparency around equitable author pay, Ellis and Flame pitched Generous to Row House. “They didn’t have any fiction yet on their list or a fiction imprint—they were doing mostly nonfiction and then children’s books,” Ellis said. “We had an instinct about how we could fit their mission, at the intersection of literature and social justice. We just connected immediately.” As part of Row House, Generous so far promises authors a competitive advance of “at least $5,000 towards a 40% profit share” on book sales.
“When Elaina and Amber approached us about taking on Generous Press as an imprint, it was an easy yes,” Borucki said. “Not only is romance one of the fastest growing genres, it was something that was missing in our catalog. And because of their commitment to spotlighting authors with marginalized identities and stories that represent them, Generous Press was the perfect fit.” Borucki also predicts that “romance isn’t going anywhere. I have no doubt that they can grow to be a significant player in the romance space.”
Row House publisher V. Ruiz echoed Borucki. “When Generous Press approached us to become an imprint, we immediately envisioned a new future within the romance genre and knew it would be a perfect match,” they said. They anticipate that Generous romances will “prioritize voices that matter and provide a much-needed healing balm for these same voices and readers.” Ruiz emphasized the genre’s focus on “hopeful worlds” and “a space for people to visualize new possibilities in their own lives” as reasons romance will click with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled audiences.
Reimagining Romance
Ellis first realized the allure of the romance genre while dealing with symptoms of long Covid and feeling troubled by the daily news. “Someone sent me romance novels as a jokey gift, and I started to get curious about what was so soothing about them,” she said. “Everything was terrible, and I was reading these books that were not demanding a lot of me. I got swept away in a story, and I kept having conversations with other people who were like, ‘Oh yeah, me too.’ ” She’d been editing poetry for a decade, yet she started to imagine romance “as a work enterprise.” She contacted Flame for a conversation.
Romance “is a genre that people don’t lead with,” Flame acknowledged. “They’re not like, ‘I’m a romance fiction writer.’ There's a lot of stigma and weirdness around romance, and so much gets published that isn’t very good quality.” Yet Flame saw untapped potential in romance, particularly from writers of color and diverse perspectives. Even though neither she nor Ellis denies trauma or seeks escapist fiction, “my personal driving mission is towards joy and towards seeing myself and the people I love in a future where we can thrive,” she said. “Love is what everybody is looking for, what everybody is wanting, and love will heal us. There are lots of beautiful love stories, and the idea is to foster some of them into a high literary quality book.”
To launch Generous Press, they began contacting fellow poets and inviting contributions for a debut anthology, Someplace Generous. The anthology was a way “to give people a lot of options,” Ellis said, with a variety of flavors and viewpoints. Flame added: “Our theme very generally was consent, this idea of an enthusiastic ‘yes.’ And so for the reader experience too, the generousness of the press is that you have options, with no shame or embarrassment.”
Stories rolled in, including some from authors Rachel McKibbens (blud), known from the Serial podcast We Were Three; Temim Fruchter, whose City of Laughter is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic; and Richard Siken, whose I Do Know Some Things is forthcoming from Copper Canyon. Jessica P. Pryde, editor of the nonfiction anthology Black Love Matters, Brionne Janae (Blessed Are the Peacemakers), and Row House publisher Ruiz also contributed work.
Someplace Generous is Generous Press’s sole title for 2024, with three more slated for 2025. Two remain under wraps, but one will be a revised edition of what Ellis calls a “deeply out of print” 1996 novel by Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein, formerly titled Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure. Bornstein was on Ellis and Flame’s wish list of authors, and because they’d met her as part of the Bent writing community, they sent her a note. “We were like, ‘What if Kate wrote a romance novel?’” said Ellis. “She was like, ‘Well, honey, I sort of already did.’ It’s about gender, meeting in chat rooms, and the commodification of identity at the dawn of the internet.” The updated version will incorporate twenty-first century standpoints into the original 1990s framework.
Ellis says that the anthology introduces Generous “with conventional, recognizable romance fiction, even the anthology is pretty unusual.” From there, the possibilities are wide open. Flame herself comes to Generous with the philosophy that “I am the creator of my representation and the future I’m thriving in. So I’m going to write this story now, even if it’s not my current state, and dream into it. The rule is, it has to end happily.”
