We’re sick of people denigrating the romance genre, and we can no longer ignore the exclusion of romance from major literary events. So we’re doing something about it.

Today is the first day of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. When we discovered the lack of romance fiction in this year’s program, readers on Twitter brainstormed ways to raise awareness for romance fiction at the festival. Here’s what we came up with.

This week, we’re asking readers who plan to attend SWF to leave specially designed postcards at common areas, empty seats and any other places that other attendees might serendipitously find them.

Here on the blog, we’ll be revealing one postcard design every day for the next six days. (The #loveromance banner provides a bit of a sneak peek.) Today, I’m super excited to show you the message that readers will see at the back of every postcard. All artwork for the postcards and banners were designed by Jennifer Wu. (And I think you’ll agree—she’s amazing.)

The quote from this postcard is by author Judith Arnold’s essay called ‘Women Do’. The essay appears in a book called Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women. You can read an excerpt here.

Tomorrow, we’ll reveal the first of five designs for the front of the postcards. We think they’re brilliant, and we hope you will, too. Watch this space!