Posted October 06, 2009 to Media Appearances, Print
I wish I hadn’t had to talk about Kate Duffy for her obituary, as I’m not sure I can fully express how much I’m going to miss her. I am quietly proud, however, to be part of the New York Times profile of Kate, because writer Margalit Fox captured her so perfectly.
Kate Duffy never cared much for demure English governesses, shy young nurses or women in bodices, ripped or otherwise, and that was a problem. Ms. Duffy was one of the foremost editors of romance novels in the United States, and heroines like these had been her genre’s stock-in-trade for decades.
So Ms. Duffy simply changed the rules, helping usher into print a new kind of romance novel featuring strong, capable women, contemporary settings and bracing sex scenes unfettered by Victorian euphemism….
“Kate Duffy was a name; she was a force in the genre,” Sarah Wendell, a founder of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, a Web site about romance novels, said in an interview on Wednesday. On the site last week, Ms. Wendell described Ms. Duffy as “the Julia Child of romance.”
“You cannot discuss cooking, you cannot discuss celebrity chefs, you cannot discuss the creation of food as a community without mentioning Julia Child,” Ms. Wendell explained. “The same goes for romance and Kate Duffy.”
