Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Denzel and Pauletta Washington and even President and First Lady Obama: for decades, they and thousands of others have positively exemplified African-American men and women in lasting, loving relationships. However, for too many book publishers, the idea of black authors writing love stories and romance novels were neither logical or profitable. It took the blockbuster success of Terry McMillan’s 1992 novel, Waiting To Exhale, to garner recognition and respect for stories with African American characters and perspectives. The ever-growing market is what’s being celebrated this weekend in Grapevine at The 20th Annual Romance Slam Jam.

Spearheaded by Dallas’ Emma Rodgers (the one-time owner of the long-running bookstore, Black Images), Ashira Toshi and local novelist, the late Francis Ray, the Romance Slam Jam brings African-American writers and their readers together to meet and greet one another, celebrate favorite novels (via the Emma Awards) and provide games, trivia, networking and workshops for beginners and best-sellers.

“We’ve made it here in Dallas because that’s where it started back in 1995,” says Deatri King-Bey, a novelist and RSJ’s committee chairperson. “It wasn’t always easy to promote one another before the Internet, so the RSJ provided a lot of us with our first real networking and marketing opportunities.

“No matter what the genre is—–Christian Romance, Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance, Teen or Paranormal Romance—–The Romance Slam Jam is open to all African-American authors.This is where their fan base will be.”

Hosted by novelists Evelyn Palfrey and Keith Thomas Walker, Rodgers and author Gwendolyn Osborne are keynote speakers and will welcome dozens of best-selling writers of African-American romance, including Beverly Jenkins, Farrah Rochon, Lutisha Lovely, Jacquelin Thomas and Zuri Day. “It’s not only about book signings,” King-Bey says, “we have pajama parties, a pep rally, book discussions and even a workshop for teens who want to get into writing romance. We’ve formed relationships over the years and it’s like a reunion when we host RSJ. We’re now a family.”

Despite the burgeoning success of African-American romance stories and novelists, some still see the genre of romance—and those who support it—as shallow, juvenile and delusional, as if love stories don’t occur outside of fiction or with people of color.

“It’s ignorance on their part,” says Beverly Jenkins, an award-winning Historical Romance novelist with dozens of well-loved titles to her name (Indigo, Nighthawk and her latest romance, Destiny’s Captive) and a new contemporary fiction Blessings Series novel, For Your Love, due out next month.

“Some say the stories are unrealistic, but there are some of us are living the dream, who have great men lives and have a romance going with their partner of choice. Some of the criticism might even be inspired by jealousy because, as one of the authors said in the [upcoming] documentary, Love Between The Covers, we [romance authors] keep the lights on for publishing, we pay the bills. Romance novels brought 1.3 billion dollars to the table last year. We outsell everything, so obviously that’s not because we’re writing silly and unrealistic stuff. Women who write romance novels are lawyers, doctors, geneticists, scientists, so these aren’t stupid women and neither are their readers.”

What Jenkins enjoys about the RSJ most is the opportunity to connect with fellow peer novelists while enjoying ‘fan-girl’ and ‘fan-guy’ moments with their devoted base. “It’s so fun for us [authors] to connect with like-minded readers—-expect to get a lot of love from us in return because we would be nothing without you. Attending RSJ is how many of us go out of our way to show y’all how much we care.”